March 11, 2003
BOB is Illegal?
Is this site illegal? On learning of BLOG the BOB, Ellen Crymble of Royal lePage writes:
Dear Gary:
Unless you have a real estate lic. what you are doing is illegal. We have strict regulations about advertising and you are not following them. The owners have not given permission to advertise on your site. Suggest you cease and desist.
It seems to me this site is journalism, not advertising; I only report on the news of something for sale by clipping and caching the page verbatim, original links and all, which is exactly what Google cache or the Internet Archive is doing; there's no claim any of this content was mine, we were simply reframing the bare synopsis of the original content into the blog ecology medium (ie exactly the same clip-reprint service as Gizmodo only for commercial real estate and we don't get his 5% commissions)
Does anyone know if there is precident for this being considered illegal? If you have any information, please leave a comment on this post ...
Addendum: As shown in the first comment, we have just received a strongly worded order from Anne Schneider (anne@gbosreb.ca), Executive Officer of the Grey Bruce Owen Sound Real Estate Board, claiming this material copyright and ordering its removal. Although Canada has no DMCA, to be prudent and polite (as Canadians do) we have disabled the BOB listings until the matter is resolved.