The internet is not a law-free zone where anything goes.  A recent decision by the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Century 21 Canada Limited Partnership v. Rogers Communications Inc., 2011 BCSC 1196, serves to reinforce this fact. 

Century 21 and two individual real estate brokers sought an injunction and damages against Zoocasa and its parent Rogers due to Zoocasa’s indexing and “webcrawling” of Century 21’s real estate listing. 

Century 21 operated a website featuring its brokers’ property listings.  Zoocasa operated a website that indexed property listings from a number of real estate websites and operated as a “vertical” search engine with respect to such listings.  In so doing, Zoocasa copied property descriptions and photographs from the Century 21 Website for use on the Zoocasa Website, a violation of Century 21’s website’s Terms of Use.