BlogTO reports that the Canadian Real Estate Association has forced Housing123, which offered a Google Maps mashup of MLS data, offline.
Canadian Real Estate Association Forces Housing123 Offline
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MLS
Just another example of companies that do not understand the power of the Internet and want to keep control of their customers. Personally, they should thank them and offer to purchase their software but instead they threaten legal action.
Unfortunately, legal action requires money and that means the one with the most money usually wins by default — same old story. This is the bigger problem in our Country and others — if only we could fix that.
Victoria REB too
I had the same thing happen from the Victoria Real Estate Board two years ago. Similarly, I had a Google Maps mash-up with RSS feeds and lots of things the board should have had years ago too. Unfortunately they don’t want competition.
Read their legal letter to me here: [ link ]
Better link to my takedown notice
Here is a better link to the takedown notice I received. The other link will probably get overloaded. [ link ]
Ken
Yeah, a huge shame. Great site which I don’t doubt helped MLS in the end. It’s sad when something that innovates or greatly improves a product or service gets crushed, by legal threats.
Legal Case?
It would be an interesting legal case, given that things like telephone directories are considered to _not_ be copyrightable, since they are a listing of facts without any real degree of creativity.
I believe the relevant legal court rulings (in Canada anyway), are located here: [ link ]
So I’d imagine that merely plotting the addresses which are available on a map, and perhaps their prices, might be fine, but pictures and descriptions may not be fair game.
Perhaps someone could make a greasemonkey script to convert REALTOR’S UPPER-CASE LISTING DESCRIPTIONS INTO READABLE ENGLISH?