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As someone apartment hunting in NYC I appreciate this. If I wasn't my feelings would be pretty mixed.
by SlyShy 14y ago
As someone apartment hunting in NYC I appreciate this. If I wasn't my feelings would be pretty mixed.
- ericd 14y agoYeah, I went back and forth on it quite a lot. That said, the law protects this sort of thing (facts can't be copyrighted, and that's all PadMapper is showing from CL), and it seems like a pretty large net loss for the world if this isn't continued. But I'm obviously biased.
- unreal37 14y agoFacts can't be copyrighted. But how is an advertisement a "fact"? Can I create a website of all the Coca-cola advertisements over the years, and call them facts? Ads aren't facts. You're still intentionally copying the CL website without the right to do that. Good luck to you. Edited: Not trying to start a "copyright isn't theft" debate.
- Produce 14y agoCopying is not stealing! Christ, the music and movie industries have really fucked up the meaning of that word in recent years.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jmduke 14y agoCraigslist's #1 asset is their gigantic amount of classifieds. There's really nothing else going for them. Any service competing with Craigslist that uses those classifieds might not be stealing them, but its certainly in Craigslist's best interest to keep their most valuable asset safe.
- Produce 14y agoI'm still technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.
- jmduke 14y agoI wasn't saying you were incorrect, mainly because I'm not nearly well-versed in law enough to define 'stealing' in such a nuanced context. I'm simply saying that Craigslist has a vested interest in keeping their data/facts/ads/whatever on their platform.
- jonknee 14y agoNo, but if you created a website that showed what prices stores were selling coke for, Coke couldn't do anything. The facts of an ad are not copyrightable.
- unreal37 14y agoIf you went and did the work to get those prices (called or visited all of the stores in a city, for instance), then you'd be correct. But if you're scraping someone else's website in an automated fashion, and that's provably true, you're entering into the copyrightability of databases. There's a material difference - collecting data yourself versus copying someone else's collection of data. As another example, can I go to Amazon.com (without using their API), scrape all the product names and prices off their web site and map the dates and times they change? I would think not. Those too are facts, but you're basically just copying someone else's database. Can I scrape stock data off of Yahoo finance without having to pay the license fee associated with getting historical stock data?
- jonknee 14y ago> As another example, can I go to Amazon.com (without using their API), scrape all the product names and prices off their web site and map the dates and times they change? I would think not. Those too are facts, but you're basically just copying someone else's database. Sure. There are plenty of services that do this, it's quite handy. Here's the one I use: http://camelcamelcamel.com/ http://camelcamelcamel.com/ > Can I scrape stock data off of Yahoo finance without having to pay the license fee associated with getting historical stock data? Sure. They even provide a CSV format to make it easier for you! http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/table.csv?s=YHOO&d=0&e=28&f=2010&g=d&a=3&b=12&c=1996&ignore=.csv http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/table.csv?s=YHOO&d=0&...
- waxpancake 14y agoA unique database of facts absolutely can be copyrighted. The Billboard charts and SoundScan are a great example, upheld in court. More here: http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html
- qohen 14y agoThe Supreme Court apparently ruled overwise on this case, as discussed above, i.e. here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4219085 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4219085