5 ms·

Ouch, sorry, I thought it was the right thing to do, on the balance. Like you said, it's a really morally gray decision, either way, but I think it's actually w

by ericd 14y ago

Ouch, sorry, I thought it was the right thing to do, on the balance. Like you said, it's a really morally gray decision, either way, but I think it's actually worse to do nothing.

sandieman 14y ago
It was the right thing.
dinedal 14y ago
Ignore this guy, you're doing the right thing, and I thank you. e: To expand, CL obviously picked on you specifically, and it deprives all the apartment hunters of your service when applied to the largest apartment listing available. I could see it if they somehow filled the void with a comparable service, before they turned it off, but by depriving padmapper access, it makes it worse for everyone.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Be careful reading these comments. There's an overwhelming bias on HN in favor of "rules that impede startups are there to be broken", and, of course, 3/4 of the site is going to cheer you on. Remember when Mark Pincus said early stage startups need (as I remember) to lie, cheat, and steal to get off the ground? HN cheered that on too. Just remember that every nerd that has ever broken any rule --- from seeding a torrent of a movie to scraping a competing site to (yes, go look it up) exploit SQL injection to dump a company's mail spool to the Internet --- has come up with a personally compelling rationale to do it. MAFIAA, "we're helping apartment hunters", "STRATFOR was an evil intelligence company". These are all of a kind. The fact is, you compete with Craigslist. However much "better" your service is, customers don't agree: they overwhelmingly prefer Craigslist, because that's where the market is: the "killer feature" in your space is the market. So, to stay viable in the face of competition that has you beaten dead to rights, you've rationalized cheating them. I don't find what you're doing detestable, or anything like that, but it sure is annoying to watch you pat yourself on the back for it. I'm with Phillip. Have you read a lot of his comments? I have. He's not dumb, nor is he a troll.
  - ericd 14y ago
    You're right, it does come off as arrogant to say that it's that much more efficient, and that that justifies making this decision. I think that the potential for doing good plays into any moral decision, though, so I don't think it's out of place in trying to explain my rationale. My intention definitely isn't to pat myself on the back here.
    - Eliezer 14y ago
      It is more efficient and that does justify the decision. Consequentialist ethics runs on quantitative considerations rather than right-of-way, so "it's more efficient" isn't an absolute right-of-way that would mean that you ought to do anything efficient regardless of the consequences - a lot of deontologists have trouble comprehending this - and if Craigslist were acting differently, or Padmapper, "efficiency" might not be enough to make it right. If Craigslist had their own version of the service, or they were about to roll one out, then efficiency wouldn't make it right. In this case, though, I'm willing to say that Craigslist doesn't have a moral right to prevent there from being a better UI to the renter's market, which is a key system resource even if they happened to create it. How would you feel if there were a private company that had invented DNS, taken on the task of gathering DNS data from many submissions, done it ad-free for a few years, and then they started deleting sites they didn't like from the Internet and suing anyone who tried to scrape their data and add the missing sites back in?
      - ericd 14y ago
        Yeah, that plays a big part in my moral code, though I don't have the language to express it :-)
      - saurik 14y ago
        Okay, and how would you feel if there were a company that claimed the DNS system was an insecure mess (or maybe one with centralized power at ICANN, a single US organization, and thereby had US-centric agendas), developed a replacement for DNS, initially passed through to the underlying DNS network most queries but added additional features on top, eventually got to the position where most DNS queries were going through them (with lockin to the specific extra features they added), and then played the same game you are bothered with (which, I feel the need to point out, isn't even what is going on here: CL is not "deleting posts they don't like" with PadMapper "adding the missing sites back in"... attempting to draw a parallel to censorship in your argument is downright disingenuous rhetoric)? There is no reason to believe that PadMapper would not easily end up in the same position going forward, and in fact the incentives are sufficiently poor that it seems like a bad assumption to believe that it would not happen: it, at least, has to be considered. To the extent to which you might argue "the conclusion wouldn't happen with PadMapper", it seems even easier to argue that "the conclusion didn't even happen currently with Craigslist" (again, read my earlier parenthetical). I bring this up to point out that there is an underlying assumption in your argument that presumes the result: that you already don't like Craigslist, and that that is what causes you to like other people over Craigslist. The DNS argument can be used in either direction: the only pull it has is an appeal to things the listener already might like or dislike (in this case, liking the idea of a theoretical open DNS system, and disliking the idea of hypothetical censorship).
phillmv 14y ago
Dude, I have no doubt your service IS way more useful than craiglist. I look forward to using it when I next move. Just… don't dance around your motivations here. You want to build a better service, and you need CL's data for that. CL doesn't want you to use their data. You said that's too bad. That's all there is to say.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  Is it really Craiglist's data? When I post to Craigslist, I think of the listing as my listing, not Craigslist's.
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    You probably feel like the stuff you upload to Facebook belongs to you too.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Yes: the copy of your listing that resides on Craigslist's servers is theirs. You are free to post the same listing to as many other sites as you want; Craigslist doesn't demand exclusivity. In that regard, your listing remains yours. You have no other claim to the posting on Craiglist itself.
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      Yes, but this can't reasonably include the material facts concerning the listing: how many bedrooms, the rental amount, the street and cross street. The data I just mentioned and the relationship between them is not something that Craigslist could reasonably own even if they did ask for exclusivity.
    - chc 14y ago
      But he said this doesn't involve touching Craiglist's servers at all. I admit I am drawing a blank as to how this would work, but the (seemingly impossible) description he offers seems to get around that objection.
loceng 14y ago
It depends what your intent is. If you're on the consumers' side, people's side, wanting to make their lives easier, better, through efficiency and therefore increased productivity - then being integrated into everything will of course cause this. Best case scenario would be some form of partnership, however Craiglist seems to want to create and control an ecosystem instead of being the management piece, instead of finding a way to survive as a management piece.
Eliezer 14y ago
I liked that calculation. I was inwardly cheering while reading it. Quantitative ethics FTW.
- jessriedel 14y ago
  You had to be suspicious of this calculation, though, right? It certainly aligns nicely with Padmapper's financial interests.
  - ericd 14y ago
    It actually doesn't align, though. I'm not going to go into detail, but my expected finances are probably higher without doing this. That was an argument against doing this.
    - jessriedel 14y ago
      Color me skeptical. Padmapper is a for profit business, and Craiglist ads make up a huge fraction of all online housing listings. In the absence of any explanation at all, I hope it's understandable why I wouldn't just take your word on it. In any case, I agree with others that you don't need to bring these kind of justifications to bear. Craigslist has no right (either legally or morally) to facts about rental locations.
      - iamwil 14y ago
        As someone that knows Eric personally, I can confirm that he'll make less money by showing craigslist listings. However, I'll leave the details up to him, though I understand why without them, you're skeptical.
        ericd 14y ago
        Thanks Wil!
      - ericd 14y ago
        PadMapper is actually a pretty unusual "business" since I'm the only person who works on it full time and it grew out of a hobby project, and still isn't really run like a business. But yeah, that's generally a reasonable assumption. I don't have to, but I thought it'd help to explain my reasoning to people.
cwp 14y ago
Nah, it's not morally gray. You guys are a search engine. Craigslist may not like what you're doing, but that doesn't make it wrong. Traditional publishers hate Google, despite all the traffic it sends them. So what? Getting a C+D from Craigslist is a good sign. It means you matter. Hang in there long enough, and Craigslist won't be able to cut you off, because a good chunk of their traffic will come through you. It's kind of weird to think of Craigslist as stodgy old-media using the courts to defend an out-dated business model because they don't like being disrupted by new technology, but here we are.
- genwin 14y ago
  > Hang in there long enough, and Craigslist won't be able to cut you off, because a good chunk of their traffic will come through you. If Craiglist was motivated that way, why would they have sent the C+D in the first place? It seems that CL is opposed to anyone violating their TOS, period, regardless of benefit to CL.
  - cwp 14y ago
    Craigslist dominates apartment rental advertising. Landlords post to CL because that's where the renters are looking, and renters look on CL because that's where landlords post apartments. But CL does have competitors. Lots of sites want a piece of that business, they just can't overcome the network effect that protects Craigslist. Right now, the overwhelming majority of pads on Padmapper are Craigslist posts. But that's just because the overwhelming majority of all advertised apartments are Craigslist posts. If people start using Padmapper in large numbers, it breaks the symmetry of CL's dominance. Landlords are still posting to CL, but renters are finding those posts through Padmapper. It won't be long before landlords realize that those renters will also find posts on Kijiji or Apartments.com or whatever. When that happen's CL is in trouble, because it's revenue comes from landlords in certain cities paying to post. CL doesn't care about the TOS per se; the TOS are designed to prevent just such a scenario.
    - genwin 14y ago
      That makes great sense. I hadn't seen that angle.
keeptrying 14y ago
I've used padmapper and its definitely teh number one choice when apartment hunting. Its not even close. Rant/ Just keep going man. If you stop doing what you do you will lose the millions(?) of people you are helping. Seriously other apartment sites just don't get it. They SUCK ... suck so bad that I'd rather bang my head on the table than use them. Without PadMapper, craigslist is worse than the other sites. I don't understand why they just don't buy you outright - thats what should happen if anyone cares about the effing consumer. /Rant Please keep going and doing what you are doing. -Very thankful apartment hunter.
blhack 14y ago
Eric, it's not even close to a grey area. Like...not even remotely close to a grey area. Consider the following: I leave a bowl of candy on my doorstep for Halloween with a note that says "Please take one piece of candy.". You, however, have a bunch of friends back home who aren't at my house to get the candy, so you take the entire bowl. You defend this, citing a "grey area" because your friends want the candy, and you're making them happy because you took it from me and gave it to them. That's what you did. No grey area. You just wanted the candy. (Do I support craigslist's decision? No, I think it's stupid, but it's their stupid decision to make.)
eevilspock 14y ago
Eric, if you are genuinely doing this for the good of the many and not for yourself, then you would use an alternative that is neither "somewhat dickish" (you're admission, not my judgement) nor somewhat cowardly (You are really just hiding behind 3Taps lawyers) if such an alternative were available. Would you not? I think you have one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4220106 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4220106
- J3L2404 14y ago
  No profit in it. This is one of those "startups".
- ericd 14y ago
  Hey, I responded there, but I'm pretty confused about what you're proposing. Email me at eric@padmapper.com?

by ericd 14y ago

Ouch, sorry, I thought it was the right thing to do, on the balance. Like you said, it's a really morally gray decision, either way, but I think it's actually worse to do nothing.

sandieman 14y ago

It was the right thing.

dinedal 14y ago

Ignore this guy, you're doing the right thing, and I thank you. e: To expand, CL obviously picked on you specifically, and it deprives all the apartment hunters of your service when applied to the largest apartment listing available. I could see it if they somehow filled the void with a comparable service, before they turned it off, but by depriving padmapper access, it makes it worse for everyone.

tptacek 14y ago
Be careful reading these comments. There's an overwhelming bias on HN in favor of "rules that impede startups are there to be broken", and, of course, 3/4 of the site is going to cheer you on. Remember when Mark Pincus said early stage startups need (as I remember) to lie, cheat, and steal to get off the ground? HN cheered that on too. Just remember that every nerd that has ever broken any rule --- from seeding a torrent of a movie to scraping a competing site to (yes, go look it up) exploit SQL injection to dump a company's mail spool to the Internet --- has come up with a personally compelling rationale to do it. MAFIAA, "we're helping apartment hunters", "STRATFOR was an evil intelligence company". These are all of a kind. The fact is, you compete with Craigslist. However much "better" your service is, customers don't agree: they overwhelmingly prefer Craigslist, because that's where the market is: the "killer feature" in your space is the market. So, to stay viable in the face of competition that has you beaten dead to rights, you've rationalized cheating them. I don't find what you're doing detestable, or anything like that, but it sure is annoying to watch you pat yourself on the back for it. I'm with Phillip. Have you read a lot of his comments? I have. He's not dumb, nor is he a troll.
- ericd 14y ago
  You're right, it does come off as arrogant to say that it's that much more efficient, and that that justifies making this decision. I think that the potential for doing good plays into any moral decision, though, so I don't think it's out of place in trying to explain my rationale. My intention definitely isn't to pat myself on the back here.
  - Eliezer 14y ago
    It is more efficient and that does justify the decision. Consequentialist ethics runs on quantitative considerations rather than right-of-way, so "it's more efficient" isn't an absolute right-of-way that would mean that you ought to do anything efficient regardless of the consequences - a lot of deontologists have trouble comprehending this - and if Craigslist were acting differently, or Padmapper, "efficiency" might not be enough to make it right. If Craigslist had their own version of the service, or they were about to roll one out, then efficiency wouldn't make it right. In this case, though, I'm willing to say that Craigslist doesn't have a moral right to prevent there from being a better UI to the renter's market, which is a key system resource even if they happened to create it. How would you feel if there were a private company that had invented DNS, taken on the task of gathering DNS data from many submissions, done it ad-free for a few years, and then they started deleting sites they didn't like from the Internet and suing anyone who tried to scrape their data and add the missing sites back in?
    - ericd 14y ago
      Yeah, that plays a big part in my moral code, though I don't have the language to express it :-)
    - saurik 14y ago
      Okay, and how would you feel if there were a company that claimed the DNS system was an insecure mess (or maybe one with centralized power at ICANN, a single US organization, and thereby had US-centric agendas), developed a replacement for DNS, initially passed through to the underlying DNS network most queries but added additional features on top, eventually got to the position where most DNS queries were going through them (with lockin to the specific extra features they added), and then played the same game you are bothered with (which, I feel the need to point out, isn't even what is going on here: CL is not "deleting posts they don't like" with PadMapper "adding the missing sites back in"... attempting to draw a parallel to censorship in your argument is downright disingenuous rhetoric)? There is no reason to believe that PadMapper would not easily end up in the same position going forward, and in fact the incentives are sufficiently poor that it seems like a bad assumption to believe that it would not happen: it, at least, has to be considered. To the extent to which you might argue "the conclusion wouldn't happen with PadMapper", it seems even easier to argue that "the conclusion didn't even happen currently with Craigslist" (again, read my earlier parenthetical). I bring this up to point out that there is an underlying assumption in your argument that presumes the result: that you already don't like Craigslist, and that that is what causes you to like other people over Craigslist. The DNS argument can be used in either direction: the only pull it has is an appeal to things the listener already might like or dislike (in this case, liking the idea of a theoretical open DNS system, and disliking the idea of hypothetical censorship).

phillmv 14y ago

Dude, I have no doubt your service IS way more useful than craiglist. I look forward to using it when I next move. Just… don't dance around your motivations here. You want to build a better service, and you need CL's data for that. CL doesn't want you to use their data. You said that's too bad. That's all there is to say.

stcredzero 14y ago
Is it really Craiglist's data? When I post to Craigslist, I think of the listing as my listing, not Craigslist's.
- fusiongyro 14y ago
  You probably feel like the stuff you upload to Facebook belongs to you too.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Yes: the copy of your listing that resides on Craigslist's servers is theirs. You are free to post the same listing to as many other sites as you want; Craigslist doesn't demand exclusivity. In that regard, your listing remains yours. You have no other claim to the posting on Craiglist itself.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    Yes, but this can't reasonably include the material facts concerning the listing: how many bedrooms, the rental amount, the street and cross street. The data I just mentioned and the relationship between them is not something that Craigslist could reasonably own even if they did ask for exclusivity.
  - chc 14y ago
    But he said this doesn't involve touching Craiglist's servers at all. I admit I am drawing a blank as to how this would work, but the (seemingly impossible) description he offers seems to get around that objection.

loceng 14y ago

It depends what your intent is. If you're on the consumers' side, people's side, wanting to make their lives easier, better, through efficiency and therefore increased productivity - then being integrated into everything will of course cause this. Best case scenario would be some form of partnership, however Craiglist seems to want to create and control an ecosystem instead of being the management piece, instead of finding a way to survive as a management piece.

Eliezer 14y ago

I liked that calculation. I was inwardly cheering while reading it. Quantitative ethics FTW.

jessriedel 14y ago
You had to be suspicious of this calculation, though, right? It certainly aligns nicely with Padmapper's financial interests.
- ericd 14y ago
  It actually doesn't align, though. I'm not going to go into detail, but my expected finances are probably higher without doing this. That was an argument against doing this.
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    Color me skeptical. Padmapper is a for profit business, and Craiglist ads make up a huge fraction of all online housing listings. In the absence of any explanation at all, I hope it's understandable why I wouldn't just take your word on it. In any case, I agree with others that you don't need to bring these kind of justifications to bear. Craigslist has no right (either legally or morally) to facts about rental locations.
    - iamwil 14y ago
      As someone that knows Eric personally, I can confirm that he'll make less money by showing craigslist listings. However, I'll leave the details up to him, though I understand why without them, you're skeptical.
      - ericd 14y ago
        Thanks Wil!
    - ericd 14y ago
      PadMapper is actually a pretty unusual "business" since I'm the only person who works on it full time and it grew out of a hobby project, and still isn't really run like a business. But yeah, that's generally a reasonable assumption. I don't have to, but I thought it'd help to explain my reasoning to people.

cwp 14y ago

Nah, it's not morally gray. You guys are a search engine. Craigslist may not like what you're doing, but that doesn't make it wrong. Traditional publishers hate Google, despite all the traffic it sends them. So what? Getting a C+D from Craigslist is a good sign. It means you matter. Hang in there long enough, and Craigslist won't be able to cut you off, because a good chunk of their traffic will come through you. It's kind of weird to think of Craigslist as stodgy old-media using the courts to defend an out-dated business model because they don't like being disrupted by new technology, but here we are.

genwin 14y ago
> Hang in there long enough, and Craigslist won't be able to cut you off, because a good chunk of their traffic will come through you. If Craiglist was motivated that way, why would they have sent the C+D in the first place? It seems that CL is opposed to anyone violating their TOS, period, regardless of benefit to CL.
- cwp 14y ago
  Craigslist dominates apartment rental advertising. Landlords post to CL because that's where the renters are looking, and renters look on CL because that's where landlords post apartments. But CL does have competitors. Lots of sites want a piece of that business, they just can't overcome the network effect that protects Craigslist. Right now, the overwhelming majority of pads on Padmapper are Craigslist posts. But that's just because the overwhelming majority of all advertised apartments are Craigslist posts. If people start using Padmapper in large numbers, it breaks the symmetry of CL's dominance. Landlords are still posting to CL, but renters are finding those posts through Padmapper. It won't be long before landlords realize that those renters will also find posts on Kijiji or Apartments.com or whatever. When that happen's CL is in trouble, because it's revenue comes from landlords in certain cities paying to post. CL doesn't care about the TOS per se; the TOS are designed to prevent just such a scenario.
  - genwin 14y ago
    That makes great sense. I hadn't seen that angle.

keeptrying 14y ago

I've used padmapper and its definitely teh number one choice when apartment hunting. Its not even close. Rant/ Just keep going man. If you stop doing what you do you will lose the millions(?) of people you are helping. Seriously other apartment sites just don't get it. They SUCK ... suck so bad that I'd rather bang my head on the table than use them. Without PadMapper, craigslist is worse than the other sites. I don't understand why they just don't buy you outright - thats what should happen if anyone cares about the effing consumer. /Rant Please keep going and doing what you are doing. -Very thankful apartment hunter.

blhack 14y ago

Eric, it's not even close to a grey area. Like...not even remotely close to a grey area. Consider the following: I leave a bowl of candy on my doorstep for Halloween with a note that says "Please take one piece of candy.". You, however, have a bunch of friends back home who aren't at my house to get the candy, so you take the entire bowl. You defend this, citing a "grey area" because your friends want the candy, and you're making them happy because you took it from me and gave it to them. That's what you did. No grey area. You just wanted the candy. (Do I support craigslist's decision? No, I think it's stupid, but it's their stupid decision to make.)

eevilspock 14y ago

Eric, if you are genuinely doing this for the good of the many and not for yourself, then you would use an alternative that is neither "somewhat dickish" (you're admission, not my judgement) nor somewhat cowardly (You are really just hiding behind 3Taps lawyers) if such an alternative were available. Would you not? I think you have one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4220106 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4220106

J3L2404 14y ago
No profit in it. This is one of those "startups".
ericd 14y ago
Hey, I responded there, but I'm pretty confused about what you're proposing. Email me at eric@padmapper.com?