Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts

We give large companies far too much lenience to bully in this country.

The legal system is fundamentally broken in this type of matchup, a small player pitted against a public company with billions of dollars floating around. Her only hope to win the fight is to be picked up by a nonprofit like the EFF, but my experience is that they're very restrained about where they'll lend assistance (that is, they're useless to most people).

Her only hope to get through the next five years without having her life substantially wrecked by a totally unnecessary lawsuit (which she will likely lose if it goes to court) is to comply with the C&D and hope that Zillow calls off the dogs.

Her brief plea for help at the end of this post could be construed as an attempt to conspire to continue to harm Zillow while avoiding legal accountability for doing so, and Zillow's attorneys will no doubt seize upon that construction to make things as bad for her as possible.

The thing to understand is that once lawyers are contacted, the time for friendly discussion or rational pleading is over. The lawyer is paid to get the court to believe that their client is being seriously harmed so that they are granted maximal damages. Conciliatory tones and forgone possibilities to highlight damage would only hurt Zillow in an eventual court case, so the lawyers must seize upon such communications aggressively. Their sole job is to make the case that Zillow is being victimized as credible as possible, which means making the defendant look as bad as possible.

We seriously need to get the legal system under control. An individual is lucky if they can afford 10 hours of time from a competent attorney. Large companies intentionally prolong their cases to try and starve less-wealthy opponents out by exhausting their legal funds. I am familiar with small companies who were forced to settle, even after spending $3M on legal services.

It takes up to a decade and millions of dollars to even have such a case seen through in the US.

IANAL.

Source: I've had a giant law firm sicked on me by a Fortune 100. I complied with their C&D (by shutting down my business) and they went away.