mcmansionhell's use is clearly fair use as it falls under both the criticism and parody exceptions. This might be why the Zillow SLAPP letter mainly focuses on supposed TOS violations. Whether unsigned web site TOS off on a page most visitors never see are enforceable at all is highly questionable.
Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
111–120 of 388 posts
Re: Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
#112Re: Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
#113IANAL but we can do some harmless armchair lawyering... The 4 Factors of "fair use"[1]: >1. the purpose and character of your use. Criticism, critique. >2. the nature of the copyrighted work. Published photos used in website blog without ads. Also, the photos were not put into a compilation book to be sold at Amazon. However, Kate Wagner does say in twitter that "this blog is my entire livelihood" so it seems that so…
They're claiming ToS violation.
Re: Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not a deep copy. Those images are still hosted via tumblr.
I fixed it. I thought when Firefox saved the Web Page complete, it was doing inline uuencoded binary as part of the the image tag. I was wrong. There's still a few hits to the 2 sites I updated, but no real content. The text and images (what actually matters here) is all IPFSified.
Looks good to me now.
Re: Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
I propose an experiement to test the elitism hypothesis: Ask a random selection of people to rate various types of houses. If McMansions are rated poorly only by "elites", then the hypothesis is true. If they're rated poorly by everyone, it's false.
The hypothesis has already been tested: these houses sell very briskly. Edit: the points below are all fair.
Or proves that people prefer a lower price point over style.
Or that, since 3/4 of US homes are spec rather than custom, developers prefer to built cheaper, larger homes when given the option.
(McMansions are generally cheaply constructed for their price / square footage)
Re: Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct, there are many tactics a well-paid lawyer can do to simply run anyone out of business based on a false or spurious copyright claim.
Why wouldn't a judge throw this out as spurious if it clearly falls under fair use? (procedural question; not asserting that it does or does not meet fair use in this case).
The goal of the plaintiff's lawyer is to make dozens and dozens of claims, so that hopefully one of them sticks while the others are thrown out. This is the common practice.
Re: Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
She has a Patreon.
seems like it would work better to scare off intimidation type lawsuits if we could show a willingness to pay her legal fees. then if they fuck off, we dont have to. there must be some kind of legal crowdfunding service like this right?
I'm not aware of something like that. :-(
Re: Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
#118I kinda figured this was coming sooner or later. McMansion Hell is using unquestionably copyrighted photos, but claims that they fall under Fair Use. I think that's true (but IANAL), but fair use is an affirmative defense that has to hold up in court.
And just because he's right doesn't mean court cases aren't expensive. I hope he either gets the attention he needs to raise some funds or gets noticed by someone willing to help him pro bono. It's a good concept for a site. On it's surface it looks down right like community service. It's a bit snarky here and there but, man, some of those houses invite that kind of criticism. I don't see him selling anything, just a…
Re: Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
#119[deleted]