To whom it may concern:

Your site has no right to download listing information. Listing information is subject to copyright and can't be copied without the listing agent's consent. You do not have the right to pull specific listings and place them on your site.

The Grey Bruce Owen Sound Real Estate Board owns its database and is exercising its right to request that you cease and desist from downloading our information.

Anne Schneider
Executive Officer
Grey Bruce Owen Sound Real Estate Board
anne@gbosreb.ca
Phone 519-364-3827

Anne,

Thank you for the clarification; all agent-owned material has been disabled from the BizOps website pending clarification.

We think it's a shame: After only a few days operation, BOB was generating 200 new visitors a day for your agents' websites. But your wish is our command -- honestly, we meant no harm and thought it would help your members sell more properties faster -- we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Best regards,
Gary Murphy, Teledyn.com

Please remove me from your site immediately. I did not give you permission to use my site at www.century21owensound.com

Dear Gary:

As a real estate Agent I am subject to the Real Estate and Business Broker's Act which lays out incredibly strict rules regarding advertising of a listing. That included the fact that I have to have signed permission from the owner to put their listing on our Internet sites which in my case include only www.mls.ca, www.HomesAcrossCanada.com and www.royallepage.ca. It doesn't give me permission to put them on any other site unless again I have written permission. I also must identify myself as an agent, the company I represent and the phone number can only be my office phone number. If it is an MLS listing then it must be identified. Your site gives the public the impression that some of these listings are your listings and that you are a real estate sales person. It also gives the impression some of the properties are being offered for sale privately. If there is a salespersons name it must identify them as ie. Century 21 Twin County Realty Ltd., Paul Byers, Sales Representative 371-2121 etc. Even the size of the agents name vs the company name is dictated to us.

I have been selling real estate for 23 years and have taught the real estate lic. courses. What you are doing is against all of our legislation. I assure you the listings you have downloaded were not yours to download and re-post so once again while I acknowledge your enthusiasm to promote your community, unless you are employed with the South Bruce Peninsula Economic Development Dept. and have access to private business listings what you are doing is illegal. I assure you the local Real Estate Board will take action to shut you down.

Ellen,

Thanks for the clarification; the board was indeed swift (and rude) in their response.

you all need to realize that what you have described in your last response runs counter to how the internet works; I did not "download" your MLS database, I only copied the public faces of it, and linked to your members' own images (which will be evident if they check their server logs) -- this is exactly what every proxy server, search engine cache and even what local browsers and intranet firewalls do routinely. That's how it works. All I added was to bring this content together into an accessible format the same way you'd get if you go to the new Google Quotes website, only done by a human instead of a machine.

Unlike the Google and Internet Archive, I only proxied member images and simply reported what I found publically available and with no commentary -- to actually view a record, the public had to go to the member site, and as you would have seen prior to my removing the site, all contact and attribution information from the original posting was there, intact, with each item beginning with a link to the host site. The sidebar and footnote disclaimer clearly states, three times, that these are verbatim from the agent sites, so if you have restrictions on fonts and sizes, then it is your member sites at fault -- I only proxied what was already there, /verbatim/, and added the ability for someone to notify a friend of the URL or to print out the relevent section of your members pages.

but that said, I did it for you, they didn't want it (for whatever reason), and it's been removed. 'nuff said.

Best regards,
Gary Murphy - teledyn.com

Dear Gary:
I still think the Munic. of South Bruce Peninsula needs to hire you. They would benefit immensely from your experience and enthusiasm.

Me too :) ... but that's another long and sordid story.

but thanks for saying that ;)

NOTE: This page is provided free of charge and for information purposes only as a community service of teledynamics communications inc. teledynamics is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the comments or listings posted to this page. for current information, please contact the real estate broker cited in the article