An architecture blogger has temporarily disabled her website, McMansionHell.com, after receiving a demand letter from Zillow and posting it on Twitter.
On Monday, Zillow threatened to sue Kate Wagner, saying that that she was violating its terms of use, copyright law, and possibly the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act because she took images from the company’s website without permission. However, on each of her posts, she acknowledged that the images came from Zillow and were posted under the fair use doctrine, as she was providing (often humorous) commentary on various architectural styles. Her website was featured on the design podcast 99% Invisible in October 2016.
Confusingly, Zillow does not even own the images in question. Instead, Zillow licenses them from the rights holders. As such, it remains unclear why the company would have standing to bring a lawsuit against Wagner.
Her website is incredibly entertaining, and you’d think such use of photos falls squarely under fair use. It sucks that she had to shutdown her website, and I’m hoping Zillow loses this case hard.
Using a single source of information just means you are lazy plagiarist. The author could have used copyright-free images or paid for stock photos to make her point.
As soon as something is created it have a copyright attached. Fair use is strongly protected in the US.
Edited 2017-06-27 09:53 UTC
Obvious not plagiarism as the source was identified, but I wonder if ‘fair use’ would cover extensive, even professional-level, copying of someone else’s work.
It is one thing to create a parody out of one or two or three pieces, but here it seems that the sole purpose of existence for mcmansionhell.com was to copy Zillow’s content and re-publish it in a slightly different context for their own profit.
Edited 2017-06-27 10:13 UTC
I actually don’t think this is covered by fair use. I’ve never looked at the site in question and if it’s based wholly on Zillow’s content then it should be shut down completely.
Fair use isn’t based on taking some picture (or other media) and writing some words for “fun” – fair use is about taking something in order to comment on that piece. This seems like someone taking a picture from someone else (that Zillow doesn’t own but use under some licence) _against_ the usage terms Zillow have and then getting upset when Zillow point out that they have agreed not to do those things (goes again their usage contract) and that it goes against copyright laws.
I can’t legally find a picture that someone else have taken of a third party and then publicize that picture but with “fun” text pointing out how ugly that third party is. That is a copyright violation and not covered by fair use.
The only difference to this case is that there are _many_ violations and most likely (again I haven’t look at the site this is about) economical gain in doing these copyright violations through ads.
Well, the pictures being used are clearly criticism of the subject matter. That is obviously fair use.
But, beyond that, Zillow does not actually own the copyright on the pictures used – the people who post their pictures of their houses are the actual copyright owner.
Blogging is not journalism according to the US’s weak positions on media protections – so no, fair use is not strongly protected in the US. Fair use rights apply like most “rights” in the US only to large corporations who have the money to protect themselves in court.
In other worse, protections apply only to those with a lot of capital, or capitalists. That’s how capitalism works.
Edited 2017-06-27 16:12 UTC
I mean, they’re using the same photos the blog was taken down… ain’t they?
Welcome to capitalist America, where company tells you what fair use is. This applies double to airlines.
Thank you for sharing this website. It’s really neat and sadly I have not heard of it before.
Amazing how people are willing to pass judgement even when they have NEVER SEEN the website in question.
This website was entertaining, yes. But that (should be) true of any good satire.
In fact, the site went far beyond satire. It existed essentially as an expression of architectural criticism (criticism as in, an academic analysis, appreciation and response to a given form – like literary criticism.) The author articulated concepts of good and bad design, and actively engaged in an ongoing project to apply critical thought to house after house. Readers were encouraged to submit houses for consideration. Houses were analyzed in an educated, and to the layman, educational, manner. Aspects of shape, proportion, form over function, were discussed. Overall themes of design (good AND bad) were illuminated by examining such a large number of houses. So the criticism worked both at the level of the individual house as a text, and as an analysis of the broader cultural practice and business of building houses.
Can’t imagine that site? It was like the editorial comments of OSNEWS but for houses. It served a valuable role in education, analysis, criticism and advocacy for good design. Basically the DEFINITION of what Fair Use provisions are for.
But no, in civil law, the law only protects you if you have the money to protect yourself. Sadly. Let’s hope the EFF or somebody sees the value in defending a scrappy satirist.