Talk:CoStar Group, Inc. v. LoopNet, Inc.

Background information

the first version of this page is created by longhaowang as a part of cyberlaw class project.

Raising dispute/question regarding Facts section

I was the VP of engineering at Loopnet from 1995 to 1999, and senior software architect from 1999 to 2001. Some facts as laid out in this article are inaccurate, based on my experience and on the record. They are listed with here with no supporting evidence. I believe the Facts section should be removed or corrected.

In particular this crucial fact is asserted: "When a photograph was uploaded into LoopNet's system by a subscriber, the photograph was not made public immediately. Instead, it was transferred to one of LoopNet's computers for review."

This is incorrect. It is also an uncited assertion. In fact, we only implemented such a process *after* CoStar complained (and subsequently sued us) about their copyrighted photos appearing on LoopNet's site. We attempted to build a system of review to satisfy their concern. The original LoopNet system permitted users to create and upload content in the form of photos and text, with no review by anyone (this was in the days before widespread link spam and JS injection). We originally relied on user emails and our own (after the fact) examination of the public website to find problems *up until the time CoStar requested that we better police the site for their photos.* It was at that point we created the pre-submission photo review system.

This is crucial to the case because we claimed in the case that we had "safe harbor" because it was users creating the content. The appellate court agreed that we were bystanders to the copyright violations and that we studiously and rapidly corrected any such violations as we detected them or they were reported to us.

So stating in the Facts section that we had implemented such a review system without providing context makes it sounds like LoopNet's design was in fact very different from what it actually was. And this is an important point in the law, because systems that involve review are much more liable for copyright violation than systems which do not. And much of today's internet is based on systems which don't require review, though they do have editorial function to eliminate inappropriate and unlawful content after the fact. CoStar v. LoopNet established an important component of this legal basis, without which sites like Youtube or Flickr would be hard pressed to survive.

Since I'm an interested party in this article, I didn't want to just hop on and edit this section. If no one objects I will edit the section to correct it, noting that it has no citations now, so I will just clean up the inaccuracies. If editing an uncited section is inappropriate then I propose we just delete the inaccurate paragraph completely b/c it's worse than having no information about the subject. I'll note this page was written by law students for a class project.

If anyone has advice or suggestions as to how to proceed, please post them here and I'll check back in a while before proceeding.

Thanks Stevemidgley (talk) 14:23, 18 March 2011 (UTC)