At McMansion Hell, Kate Wagner chronicles homes where architects went overboard.
This week, the grad student at Johns Hopkins’ Peabody Institute is facing pushback from real estate site Zillow. It’s about the photos, not the words.
According to Gizmodo, lawyers sent a cease and desist letter to Wagner, claiming that she took photos from Zillow without permission. Along with copyright violations, a letter also claimed Wagner could be in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. McMansion Hell is currently offline (It’s still on Tumblr). In a statement, Wagner said the blog and freelancing gigs helped her support herself, and receiving the letter was “utterly terrifying.”
this blog is my entire livelihood, if it goes, I lose absolutely everything. https://t.co/Px1cUbULVo
— kate wagner (@mcmansionhell) June 26, 2017
The claim got immediate attention from lawyers, and she is receiving from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Ars Technica reports that Zillow doesn’t own the photos in question. Besides, she posted that the photos came from Zillow, and were used under the Fair Use doctrine since her commentary was funny.
Zillow is catching its own heat as a result.
https://twitter.com/ByRosenberg/status/879752880512573440
But the site is sticking with the request, and said in a statement provided to Fortune that it didn’t intend to shut McMansion Hell down.
Before you go...
To keep our site paywall-free, we’re launching a campaign to raise $25,000 by the end of the year. We believe information about entrepreneurs and tech should be accessible to everyone and your support helps make that happen, because journalism costs money.
Can we count on you? Your contribution to the Technical.ly Journalism Fund is tax-deductible.
Join our growing Slack community
Join 5,000 tech professionals and entrepreneurs in our community Slack today!
