Zillow Still Doesn't Get It: Second Letter About McMansion Hell Is Still Just Wrong

from the not-fixing-things dept

One of the big stories of the week so far was Zillow's mind-numbingly bizarre decision to have a recent-hire lawyer send out a completely bullshit threat letter to the website McMansion Hell. Things have not gone well for Zillow in the wake of this. Multiple news articles have been mocking Zillow's decision, and my own Twitter feed has been filled with people saying unkind things directed at the company. And then there's whatever this is:

Given that, as we discussed in our original post, there is no legitimate legal claim here, the only thing that the threat letter seems to have done is piss off a ton of people about Zillow. That's bad.

And it doesn't seem to be getting better. Rather than doing what I thought the company would do on Tuesday (i.e., admit that it fucked up, slap the lawyer on the wrist, apologize profusely and promise to put in place better processes to avoid this sort of thing from happening again), the company is trying to justify its decision. The Verge has the followup letter that was sent by Zillow's VP of Communications & Public Affairs, trying to better "explain" the reasoning for the original letter. It doesn't help. It actually makes things worse.

Dear Kate,

Over the past day, we’ve had a lot of questions from the media about the cease and desist our legal team sent to you. I understand why – your blog is well-loved by its many fans.

Okay. There's no apology in that first line, so we're already off on the wrong foot. And... seeing as Zillow admits the blog is "well-loved," didn't anyone at Zillow think that maybe sending a ridiculous and misleading threat letter was a bad idea?

I wanted to write to both thank you for taking down the photos, but also to give you a little bit of context around the request.

She didn't take down the photos. She took down the whole blog. Because you sent a completely bogus threat letter than never should have been sent.

Mostly, though, I want to stress that we do not want you to take down your blog. We hope you will be able to resume your writing and find other sources for photos.

Except... it's totally reasonable for someone scared by a bogus threat letter to pull down the whole site, rather than go back and individually ruin each story which all rely on images.

Second -- and more importantly -- she doesn't need to find other sources for photos because (1) Zillow has no copyright interest here and should shut up about the copyright and (2) FAIR USE protects what she is doing. So this letter is just... still wrong.

As for why we requested you remove the photos from Zillow – we do not own the rights to many of the photos on our site, and therefore can’t give permission for third parties, such as yourself, to take the photos from our website for any purpose. We get them from brokerages and MLSs who are advertising homes for sale and through those agreements we have an obligation to protect the interest of the copyright holders who license the images to Zillow.

And this paragraph... makes things even worse. First off, you didn't "request" that she remove the images, you sent a silly, misleading and simply wrong legal threat letter. That's a massive difference. It wasn't a "hey, please could you..." it was "if you don't do this we're going to sue you and ruin you." Second, you're admitting again that you don't hold the rights, which means you also don't need to worry about "giving permission" to others, because it's not yours to give. Third, thanks to fair use, no one needs to give or even ask for permission. So what's your point here other than that Zillow doesn't seem to comprehend the most basic concepts of copyright law?

Fourth, since Zillow freely admits that it has no copyright in these images, then, no, it does not have any "obligation" to protect the copyright holders. In fact, under the DMCA you can get into trouble for falsely trying to represent a copyright holder when you have no legitimate right to do so. And, fifth, just because it covers this line too: FAIR USE means that you're not protecting the interest of copyright holders anyway.

We are happy to answer any questions about this, and I sincerely hope you are able to find other sources for photos.

Best,

Katie Curnutte

She doesn't need to find other sources. Fair use means she can do what she's doing and Zillow should shut up, other than maybe offering an apology.

Meanwhile, another organization that does understand copyright and fair use much better than Zillow is EFF. And EFF is now representing McMansion Hell. I get the feeling Zillow is going to keep regretting this until someone there grapples with just how dumb the company has been this week from both the legal and the communications side.

Filed Under: cease and desist, cfaa, copyright, mcmansion hell, threats
Companies: mcmansion hell, zillow

Zillow Sends Totally Bullshit Legal Threat To McMansion Hell

from the censorious-thugs dept

There are few things I hate more than when tech platforms -- which have benefited from key rights provided to internet platforms and the public -- turn around and abuse the law to try to silence or kill off others. And the latest company to dive headfirst into this unfortunate pool of shame is Zillow, which is threatening to sue the person behind McMansionHell.com based on a number of different awful interpretations of the law that can be summed up as: "hey, you can't use our images to make fun of homes."

This threat against McMansion Hell is particularly dumb. On multiple levels. The threat letter offers up a bunch of theories for why McMansion Hell is illegal, none of which make any sense at all when you dig in. Zillow just looks like a particularly assholish, censorial thug.

McMansion Hell, if you didn't already know about it, is basically exactly what it says on the tin. It's a website that looks critically at some trends in home design. I've visited the site a few times in the past, but not in a while -- and because of the threat, the site is currently down. This is what you see as I write this:

But, before that, it looked something like this (via Google Cache):

I realize there's a lot there, but the site would take a bunch of images, of houses, sometimes adding annotations and captions and the go into great detail critiquing a trend, or style, or architectural or real estate idea. It was informative and funny. And, at least for the time being, it doesn't exist.

Zillow's legal theories here are... mostly of the crazypants variety. First, the letter says that McMansion Hell is violating Zillow's terms of service, because the terms of service forbid reproducing or modifying images on Zillow.

Zillow's Terms of Use (the "Terms") specifically prohibit reproducing, modifying, distributing, or otherwise creating derivative works from any portion of the Zillow Site. The Terms further prohibit reproduction of any underlying images from real estate listings on the Zillow Site, as well as any use of the Zillow Site that could harm Zillow or its suppliers.

You are in violation of the Terms, and admit to this Yourself in certain posts on Your Site, wherein You state that "[a]ll photographs in this post are from real estate aggregate Zillow.com..." and reference the fact that Your posts feature "[m]anipulated photos."

First off, Zillow cannot use its terms of service to wipe out fair use as a legal defense. The only remedy for Zillow is to stop the person behind McMansion Hell, Kate Wagner, from having an account on the site. But since many of the images are publicly available, she absolutely has a right to make non-infringing fair use reproductions and derivative works. This general threat that if you violate the terms that the company comes up with itself you've run into legal trouble is nonsensical (even though some try to make CFAA arguments about this -- but we'll get to that).

Next, Zillow's lawyer insists that this is not fair use. The argument here can basically be summed up as "No Fair Use Allowed."

In addition to violating the Terms, Your actions infringe on the rights of each copyright holder of the images. You state that the Images are used "for the purposes of education, satire, and parody consistent with 17 U.S.C. § 107," which appears to be a claim that Your use constitutes fair use. Courts weight four primary factors in determining whether use of a copyright work is fair use. When those factors are applied to Your use of the Images on Your Site, none support an argument that Your use is fair use.

That's it. Say there are four factors, mention none of them, then say that none of the factors apply. While it is true that merely saying that you're using the images for fair use purposes is not enough to shield you if you are infringing, here it seems to pretty clearly be fair use under all of the factors. The use is clearly transformative. Whereas Zillow is about selling houses, McMansion Hell is about providing commentary and criticism about real estate and residential architecture. That's a very different use, and showing images of actual homes seems perfectly key to that, and we have multiple cases that have said similar uses are fair use. On top of that, there's tremendous commentary and criticism to go along with the images, which makes it an even stronger fair use argument.

And, let's not forget that, as far as I know -- and as the letter more or less admits -- Zillow doesn't hold the copyright in these images. It's merely licensing them from the actual copyright holders, and thus it can't make any credible copyright threat against McMansion Hell, as it doesn't even hold the rights in question. What a joke.

Finally we get to the CFAA argument which, of the three arguments made, is the dumbest. But at least there's an actual legal issue there -- unlike the previous two:

Furthermore, Your activities may violate the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030, and state laws prohibiting fraud and interference with Zillow's business expectations and interests.

Of course, note the lack of any explanation for how this violates the CFAA. That should be a pretty strong statement that Zillow's lawyer knows there's no substance to this argument, but wants to make the threat letter sound as scary as possible (which worked). The only argument that the company could probably come up with is the claim that violating the terms is what violates the CFAA -- but those arguments have mostly (though not entirely) failed in court. Even when the argument has been accepted, I fail to see how the situations in those cases would apply here to a blog doing commentary.

In other words, all three of the supposed arguments against McMansion Hell are silly in the extreme. Zillow and its lawyer, Christopher Poole, (note: not moot) should feel bad. It appears that Poole (the lawyer one) just joined Zillow last month. Hopefully, this was the overeager new guy thinking he was doing something good, rather than shitting all over Zillow's brand as a supporter of a free and open internet.

Hopefully as this gets out, and people realize just how ridiculously censorial and obnoxious Zillow appears, the company will reconsider and apologize. This is not just bad behavior. This is attacking free speech on an open internet -- the same open internet that allowed Zillow to exist and thrive in the first place. The company should be ashamed.

Filed Under: cfaa, christopher poole, commentary, copyright, criticism, fair use, kate wagner, mcmansion hell, reporting, terms of use
Companies: mcmansion hell, zillow