One hand giveth, the other taketh away (or something like that)

Over the past two weeks or so there has been a LOT of online discussion about a decision by the Metropolitan Indianapolis Board of REALTORS® (MIBOR) regarding an MLS rule about IDX.

As I understand it (and this is extremely simplified), a broker in the Indianapolis market filed a complaint with the local MLS when that broker found that listings on a competitor’s IDX Web site had been indexed by Google, and the listings from that site were reachable by a direct link from the Google search. For example, if you searched for “123 Main Street” the search would return a link that would take you directly to the listing on the competitor’s IDX site.

The complaint was based on an MLS rule – Multiple Listing Service Policy Statement 7.58 – that states:

Participants must protect IDX information from misappropriation by employing reasonable efforts to monitor and prevent “scraping” or other unauthorized accessing, reproduction, or use of the MLS database.

Or, to put it another way, “Participants have lots of valuable data in an IDX feed, and they must lock the door against those that would steal it.”  (My words, not NAR’s….)

After checking with the NAR Center for REALTOR® Technology (CRT), the MLS ruled that a Participant who allowed her IDX site to be indexed by Google had violated the “anti-scraping” rule. The reason (again, greatly simplified) is that while indexing and scraping are different animals in terms of intent and use of collected data, they use very similar techniques and both come in through the same “door” to the computer server. So if the MLS Participant didn’t lock the door against Google, it shows that the Participant also hadn’t locked the door against scrapers.

With lots of gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, the RE.net has been commenting that perhaps MIBOR and NAR lack some basic understanding of all things technical and were incapable of making sense of this rule in a meaningful manner.

While all of this was going on, NAR staff and members of the MLS Committee were working on a rule fix to address the situation. At the MLS Committee meeting at the NAR Mid-Year meetings, the Committee debated and passed an amendment to the rules that simply said: “Participants must protect IDX information from unauthorized uses. This requirement does not prohibit indexing of IDX sites by search engines.” Under this proposed change, search engine indexing would be authorized regardless of similarities to scraping – a big win for the power of grassroots blogging.

But that was Thursday. At the NAR Board of Directors meeting on Saturday, a motion was made to send the proposal back to committee for further consideration. It passed (barely), which means the earliest a change can be made is now at the Convention in November.  The news was reported by NAR, and was immediately picked up by various blogs, including those that originally brought the subject to light.

So now what? The proposal will likely be part of an MLS Workgroup to study possible updates to the overall IDX policies, and there presumably will be a report and related motions in November. In the meantime, every local MLS has this rule on the books (it is mandatory), but each MLS has to decide how to interpret that rule. If you’re concerned, consult with your MLS administrator to see if they are planning to take any actions, or if they’re just going to wait and see what happens in November.