I swear, if I were part of the three comma club I would have a very well-funded non-profit legal firm that would jump at the opportunity to take on cases like this.
Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
71–80 of 388 posts
Re: Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, it's now immortalized as a hash in IPFS. Good luck censoring that. http://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmeLsfKxF4dhmyX2FSGotaDPmMEqe8p3... UPDATED HASH: http://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmUayNU49TWHMid6pSEBSKPAHsxJkTnd... There's still a few hits going to Tumblr and fonts.gstatic.com , but all the actual content is safely inside IPFS and being served from in there. I'll let someone else rip the external calls out.
It tries to load the images (that Zillow is purportedly threatening the author over) from Tumblr though...
Tumblr caches everything for a looooong time.
Re: Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Website is still up. http://www.mcmansionhell.com/
Ah, I believe the content was removed when I first clicked. Looks like it's back now.
A few minutes ago it looked like the content had been deleted. Right now I tried twice; first time I got a Tumblr error page, the second time I got a redirect to an "Enter Password" field on a Tumblr blog page.
I'm going to suggest that the owner is migrating the domain to point at a Tumblr page. Right Now. Maybe his servers were having trouble with the increased interest?
Re: Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
#74Switch all Zillow pics to Google Streetview. I doubt they will sue because Google doesn't care if you criticize random houses that they aren't selling. TOS:
https://www.google.com/permissions/geoguidelines.html#street...
Re: Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
#75On what grounds can they sue? Isn't this pure free speech? It looks like the only references to Zillow ever are citations that the photos come from their website http://www.mcmansionhell.com/search/zillow
Well, it's now immortalized as a hash in IPFS. Good luck censoring that. http://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmeLsfKxF4dhmyX2FSGotaDPmMEqe8p3... UPDATED HASH: http://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmUayNU49TWHMid6pSEBSKPAHsxJkTnd... There's still a few hits going to Tumblr and fonts.gstatic.com , but all the actual content is safely inside IPFS and being served from in there. I'll let someone else rip the external calls out.
Not a deep copy. Those images are still hosted via tumblr.
Re: Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
#76IANAL 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 some commercial activity is happening.
>3. the amount and substantiality of the portion taken
Kate Wagner took a tiny percentage in proportion to Zillow's entire photo database. If the proportion measurement is a particular photographer's portfolio, she may have taken most or 100%.
>4. the effect of the use upon the potential market.
Does KW's usage of the photos cause economic harm to the photographers of real estate? Do the McHell photos reduce the value of photographers' other photos in their portfolio?
Doesn't seem so but there may be some additional cause & effect that damages photographers' works.
Seems like (3) and (4) would be Zillow's strongest arguments.
Re: Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
#77Seems like a subscription to a national MLS service would allow her access to all the same images with none of the copyright claims Zillow wants to make.
I doubt an MLS service would permit a user whose intent is to mock some of the listings. She'd have to become a real estate broker, too.
Re: Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if Zillow even has standing to sue over copyright because, as far as I can tell, Zillow gains the right to use agents' photos but there is no copyright transfer.
Maybe their agreement allows them to act as an "enforcement arm" of the agents? What I find interesting is the choice to threatening them rather than just sending a DMCA takedown to Tumblr. Then again, the people (bots?) sending these emails may have no idea where it's hosted.
> Maybe their agreement allows them to act as an "enforcement arm" of the agents?
I don't think the courts recognize such agreements as valid, as the demise of Righthaven showed.
Re: Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
#79I totally understand the whole "McMansions are bad architecture" thing... However, something about it really bothers me. There was an episode of 99% Invisible where the guest was talking about their McMansions blog and how it makes fun of these Horrid dwellings. The whole thing stank of classist elitism. The Wrong Type of people were getting the chance to design and build large houses, and of course they're applying…
So, first, a lot of the architectural choices (especially if they were picked out by the homeowners and not by the architects) are done to ape (poorly) aristocratic and "Old Money" sorts of dwellings...so, making fun of them on a classist line is semi-acceptable.
The real problem is that the architecture is just plain bad. Space is wasted, exterior are marred by design details meant only to suggest a style of building without any of the things that make them useful, interiors waste space and destroy any efficient attempts at heating and cooling--there is no defending that.
Re: Zillow forces McMansion Hell to delete posts
#80She might want to double check with Zillow. The Cease and Desist is signed 'Christopher Poole', which happens to be the real name of Moot of 4chan fame?