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Thanks for the explanation! I've talked with lawyers about this in the past week, and facts, totally rewritten summaries of fact, and collections of facts aren'

by ericd 14y ago

Thanks for the explanation! I've talked with lawyers about this in the past week, and facts, totally rewritten summaries of fact, and collections of facts aren't copyrightable in the US, so it's not really an issue of their content, as far as I understand. They do have a right not to be crawled by me, though, especially if it causes a burden on them. I wrote that crawler specifically to be very light on their servers including making tradeoffs to usability (it never recrawls listings), but that's still their decision to make. If there are ways to get the data that don't involve touching their servers, then the TOU no longer applies, if I understand the law, but it would obviously make them angry, and so I'm most likely not going to do that.

GigabyteCoin 14y ago
What about copyright traps? Say Craigslist created a fake listing or two for say a 2 bedroom apartment in the middle of an industrial complex? (ie, an apartment that doesn't exist, but was placed there by Craiglist to serve as evidence against your copying). If the Craigslist lawyers find that fake listing on PadMapper, could they do anything to charge you with regards to a copyright violation? I'm not trying to drag this on. I'm only trying to help. Here is a smoking gun article on Rand McNally's copyright traps (or lack thereof): http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1058/do-maps-have-copyright-traps-to-permit-detection-of-unauthorized-copies http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1058/do-maps-have-c...
- ericd 14y ago
  Right, but there they were wholly copying what is essentially a drawn representation of geography, which is an original work. If you made a rough sketch of that map, it wouldn't be copyright infringement.
nabraham 14y ago
I agree that this isn't a copyright issue. If you're operating in California, the 9th Circuit is probably your best bet for holding that your scraping of their data doesn't damage or impair their computer system. But given your other comments, it is unlikely you want to raise the funds or spend the time to battle it out in court. But there is an another way - let us (all of us) get the Craigslist data for you. You could create a browser plugin that would save craigslist posts a user views, and then upload only those posts to a central database that feeds padmapper. With just 1,000 users you would get most but not all the data you currently are scraping. This is the same approach used by Recap (https://www.recapthelaw.org/ https://www.recapthelaw.org/) as a response to the federal government's paywall to access public court filings.
- ericd 14y ago
  Thanks for the advice! But yeah, court sounds like a pretty big clusterfuck with a potentially bigger clusterfuck at the end of the rainbow. I have a feeling that the plugin would get me sued as well, though I suppose that would be a more winnable battle.

by ericd 14y ago

GigabyteCoin 14y ago

What about copyright traps? Say Craigslist created a fake listing or two for say a 2 bedroom apartment in the middle of an industrial complex? (ie, an apartment that doesn't exist, but was placed there by Craiglist to serve as evidence against your copying). If the Craigslist lawyers find that fake listing on PadMapper, could they do anything to charge you with regards to a copyright violation? I'm not trying to drag this on. I'm only trying to help. Here is a smoking gun article on Rand McNally's copyright traps (or lack thereof): http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1058/do-maps-have-copyright-traps-to-permit-detection-of-unauthorized-copies http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1058/do-maps-have-c...

ericd 14y ago
Right, but there they were wholly copying what is essentially a drawn representation of geography, which is an original work. If you made a rough sketch of that map, it wouldn't be copyright infringement.

nabraham 14y ago

I agree that this isn't a copyright issue. If you're operating in California, the 9th Circuit is probably your best bet for holding that your scraping of their data doesn't damage or impair their computer system. But given your other comments, it is unlikely you want to raise the funds or spend the time to battle it out in court. But there is an another way - let us (all of us) get the Craigslist data for you. You could create a browser plugin that would save craigslist posts a user views, and then upload only those posts to a central database that feeds padmapper. With just 1,000 users you would get most but not all the data you currently are scraping. This is the same approach used by Recap (https://www.recapthelaw.org/ https://www.recapthelaw.org/) as a response to the federal government's paywall to access public court filings.

ericd 14y ago
Thanks for the advice! But yeah, court sounds like a pretty big clusterfuck with a potentially bigger clusterfuck at the end of the rainbow. I have a feeling that the plugin would get me sued as well, though I suppose that would be a more winnable battle.