ACTRIS Image Rules Petition: Anti-Trust and Bad for (the vast majorioty of) Agents

[Joe Cline] Hired their own attorney? I'm pretty sure the attorney works for Turnquist/Shiflet, therefore has no duty to the MLS, ACTRIS, or other members. So who cares if they hired their own attorney? That attorney ONLY CARES ABOUT THEIR CLIENTS.

[Joe Cline] Ok. I'm with you here

[Joe Cline] Then DON'T put 'Y' in the little field that says IDX and they will not be on the web. Voila. Your listings are yours and yours alone.

[Joe Cline] If you don't mind sharing, then what is this whole petition about? Oh, you don't mind sharing as long as all the MLS images look like this. Secondly, if you read the petition, you'll see what Cord and his attorney think "proper" credit means. The long and short of it is that Cord thinks he should get his name, email, company name, and phone number on every property page any agent has up to 25 TIMES!!!

[Joe Cline] The petition looks it was drafted with the help of the lawyer. Be aware that there are two separate issues in the petition. 1) do we want to control where syndication occurs, and 2) should we allow 25 references to the listing agent per listing.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/aboractris-rules/

[Joe Cline] The petition does not simple ask to put the listing agent's information on all syndicated listings. It asks ABOR to do it 25 times per listing. On each and every photo. Nor does the petition say who will pay for regulating these "watermarks". How big should the watermarks be? Where should they be? What if there is a complaint about a non-compliant watermark? Sure you can help me sell my client's listing, but I'm going to need 25 citations on every page of your website. Who wants anyone's name and info on a single page 25 times? That's ridiculous.

[Joe Cline] This is pretty much the only reasonable request in the petition. Of course how granular do you get? It can be a nightmare. Who wants even more fields to fill out to post listings? Plus if you start putting specific sites on there, who's to say that it is not violating anti-trust laws, by limiting competition among agents.Of course, I'm not a lawyer so what do I know?

[Joe Cline] So far you've got you, your lawyer, and less than 10% of the membership. Talk to me when you get to 50% (and good luck with that!).

Suffice it to say that I'm against the petition and the wonderful images that it espouses. Lastly, this does seem like that last proposal that ABOR made that sparked the DOJ of Anti-Trust lawsuit. This could be construed as being able to hand select which agents/websites you cooperate with, so that could limit open and free competition among agents and choice for the real estate consumer.