McMansion Suit Won’t Happen

Electronic Frontier, a legal advocacy group that defends digital privacy, has backed down real estate company Zillow. The developer was threatening legal action against blog author Kate Wagner, whose blog McMansionHell.com features biting critiques of lavish, over-sized homes dubbed McMansions. The threatened suit concerned photos from Zillow’s website that Wagner used to illustrate the conspicuous consumption such homes reflect. Zillow had suggested that Wagner was at risk of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act – the federal anti-hacking law. EFF lawyers countered that Zillow’s accusations were unsupportable, and cited another law, the Consumer Review Fairness Act, which shields individuals who express honest opinions about a business online.