A new section has been added to the CREA Data Distribution Facility (DDF®) Rules that states participants must not pull a feed of listing content for a National Shared Pool (NSP) website until they have opted into the NSP through the DDF® dashboard. The existing rule regarding use of a technology provider has also been expanded to make it clear that participants must opt into the NSP before they retain the services of a technology provider to operate a NSP website. This rule change ensures that technology providers cannot display DDF® listing content on their clients' websites before their clients have contributed their own listings to the NSP.
A requirement that members must refresh their websites at least once every 24 hours was built into the DDF® Rules when they were created. However, this rule did not address cached listing content or members' obligations with respect to outdated listing content. For this reason, DDF® Rule 5 has been amended to say that all listing content that is no longer current after a refresh must be removed from the National Pool or Member Feed Website.
TREB Members, and especially their technology providers, who are using DDF® should familiarize themselves with these rule changes. CREA's full explanation of these rule changes, including a link to the DDF® rules in their entirety can be found here:http://news2me.crea.ca/boards/2016/01_jan/readmore-a.htm