3 ms·
The individual posts belong to the users, that is true. However one post alone is worthless. What's valuable is Craigslist's collection of posts with lots of
by lobotryas 14y ago
The individual posts belong to the users, that is true. However one post alone is worthless. What's valuable is Craigslist's collection of posts with lots of relevant data (location, description, price, etc). This collection belongs to Craigslist because their servers provide the environment for it, plus they wrote the architecture and back-end to support it.
- learc83 14y agoSee my answer to mikeryan's post above for information on why that is not necessarily the case. An individual phone number is worthless as well, the collection is valuable. But case law says a phonebook isn't covered by copyright.
- lobotryas 14y agoI see two problems with your argument: 1) You are comparing physical media to a web service 2) You are confusing content with access to content Since you mentioned Phonebook, let's take yellowpages.com This site has much of the same information that a phonebook does. I would argue that it would be illegal for company B to scrape yellowpages.com for this information in order to make money without express permission from yellowpages.com. However, if Company B found another way to access the same information (ex: scanning physical phonebooks or asking people to sign up to their site) then I'd say they're within the law. Craigslist is 100% within their rights to control who accesses their service and how. If CL users want to register for Padmapper and post the same ads on both services then that's their prerogative.
- learc83 14y ago>if Company B found another way to access the same information (ex: scanning physical phonebooks or asking people to sign up to their site) then I'd say they're within the law. Company B has found another way. They are getting the data from Google's cache of the craigslist. Padmapper is not touching Craigslist's servers at all.