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Zillow Backs Down After Sending Cease and Desist Letter to Satirical Real Estate Blog McMansion Hell

Zillow made headlines this week when it sent a threatening cease and desist letter to the creator of , a viral architecture blog dedicated to poking fun at the poorly designed, oversized American homes that in the 1990s well into the late 2000s. , a 23 year-old grad student studying architectural acoustics, and the author of the website, overlays hilarious snippets of text over images of “McMansions” grabbed from various online real estate listings. is a caption stating that all photographs used are “for the purposes of education, satire, and parody consistent with 17 USC §107.” A quick look through Wagner’s posts and it becomes clear that her posts are consistent with this claim. Her work is a textbook example of the used to determine fair use by U.S. copyright law. This however did not stop Zillow from sending her a threatening letter on June 26th, that she “cease all access to and use of the Zillow Site,” and “delete all Images and derivates thereof.” They gave her three days to comply. Wagner was understandably terrified and asking for assistance: “Somebody help me, Zillow is threatening to sue me.” In she wrote “this blog is my entire livelihood, if it goes, I lose absolutely everything.” After a series of tweets, her fans were reasonably concerned. Within a day, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) volunteered to step up and moving forward. Wagner was assured that Zillow’s alleged claims of copyright infringement were unfounded, as this was simply a weak attempt to get her to take down the images which criticized many of the website’s listings. The main arguments put forth by Zillow were: (1) McMansion Hell was violating Zillow’s Terms of Use, which specifically prohibits “(i) reproducing images from the Zillow site… (ii) modifying those images… (iii) and displaying such modified images.” (2) Wagner’s claim that her work qualifies as fair use is not justified. Specifically referring to the four factors, Zillow asserts “none support an argument that Your use is fair use.” (3) Wagner’s 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.” What played out over the next few days was an amusing exchange of letters between Zillow and the EFF, beginning with a written on behalf of Wagner, in which EFF Staff Attorney Daniel K. Nazer asserted that Zillow’s legal complaints are in fact “baseless.” The EFF's response to Zillow can be summarized as follows: Firstly, the accusation that McMansion Hell has somehow violated Zillow’s Terms of Use is irrelevant since Wagner never agreed to them, and therefore is not bound by them. Even if she were bound by them, they would be unenforceable under the protections of the , which according to the EFF, “includes prohibiting any provision of Zillow’s Terms of Use that would purport to waive Wagner’s fair use rights in this circumstance… which expressly includes a “pictorial review.” This is all made even more absurd by the fact that paragraph 14 of asserts their “right to change these Terms of Use at any time in its sole discretion” - the very terms Wagner never agreed to in the first place. Secondly, Zillow claims that her work does not meet any of the four factors which determine fair use, but does not explain why that is the case. “Wagner transforms the photographs with her critical annotation and uses the photographs for a radically different purpose than Zillow or the original photographers,” writes Nazer. The letter also points out that there is no market harm, as McMansion Hell is clearly not a competitor of Zillow (nor would anyone somehow confuse the two). The only conceivable “harm” being done here is by Wagner commenting on the architectural flaws in certain homes being listed, which she is free to do, as it has no relevance to copyright law. Adding to the absurdity is the admission from Zillow that they . They simply license them from the original copyright holders. Nazer points out that “Zillow cannot leverage its agreements with third parties to assert some kind of ‘super copyright’ that overrides fair use.” The copyright owners in this case are primarily real estate agents and brokerages uploading their photos to the listing site, therefore the responsibility to allege infringement would fall on them, not Zillow.

Lastly there is the argument that Wagner “may violate” the . According to the EFF, “The CFAA is the federal anti-hacking statute intended to criminalize unauthorized intrusions into computer networks,” . Zillow’s mention of this is of course, followed up by no explanation about how McMansion Hell is specifically in violation of the CFAA. Mike Masnick of Techdirt🤪 that the lack of evidence is “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.”

Zillow’s attempt to bully Wagner into removing her images resulted in what can only be described as nothing short of a PR nightmare for the company. With almost every major tech blog and website reporting on the incident from the point of view that Zillow had absolutely no basis to its claims, it did not take long for the the company to back down. Described as a by The Verge, a by Techdirt, and by TechCrunch, the online housing giant dropped its legal claims against McMansion Hell a mere three days after its initial cease and desist letter. In an to The Architect’s Newspaperಞ, a public relations manager from Zillow stated that they would no longer be pursuing legal action against Kate Wagner and McMansion Hell. “It was never our intent for McMansion Hell to shut down, for this to appear as an attack on Kate’s freedom of expression,” they said, “We acted out of an abundance of caution to protect our partners.”

Thanks to the EFF, and to the overwhelming support from McMansion Hell’s fans, it’s safe to say this was a “win” for freedom of speech on the Internet. Kate Wagner's followers will be pleased to hear that McMansion Hell is back up and running after the three-day hiatus, and will continue to publish two posts a week as usual. Hopefully other companies can learn from Zillow’s mistake, and will try harder to get competent legal and PR advice before bringing copyright infringement claims.

{link vào yuamikami}|{ae 888 fan}|{yuamikami press 74}|{xem trực tiếp đá gà thomo campuchia}|{đá gà cựa sắt campuchia}| Mostafa El Manzalawy is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. He is currently pursuing his M.A. at NYU Gallatin, studying the tech industry and its effects on global wealth inequality. Mostafa is a tech enthusiast, spending his summer as an intern at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society doing research relating to data protection and privacy law for the Lumen database. In his free time, he can be found spending far too much time on his computer, listening to podcasts, and indulging his interests in Eastern philosophy and human behavior.