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When Craigslist Blocks Innovations

• gdltec 14y ago
  Disagree. Everyone is open to compete against Craigslist... and good luck!
  • tylermenezes 14y ago
    You disagree with what? You don't think the lawsuits are real?
    • URSpider94 14y ago
      I think what the OP is saying is that there's no right, stated or implied, to wrap Craigslist data in your own UI. If you want to write your own front end for classified ads, you're going to have to bring your own ads to the table as well.
      • huckleberries21 14y ago
        I don't think even Bilton is arguing that CL is not within their legal rights. He is just pointing out that it seems contradictory to their claimed culture of being community-driven, anti-SOPA, wanting to be a public good, and all that jazz.
      • stevewilhelm 14y ago
        Agree with huckleberries21. The story would not have been as sympathetic to Mr. DeMenthon if he was hosting a site called, WhereToSetUpMethLabs.com.
    • sliverstorm 14y ago
      I'm guessing that he disagrees with the assertion that Craigslist is blocking innovation. After all, they have done nothing to stop Pad Mapper from doing their thing, given Pad Mapper goes and uses their own data.
• waterlesscloud 14y ago
  It's ironic that the post claims Craigslist cultivates an exaggerated image of doing public good, but then repeats without question Padmapper's claim that it's all about doing more good and saving people time. I strongly suspect both sites are pretty equal in their overstated desire to "just do good".
  • ericd 14y ago
    That's not the only motivating factor, it's more complicated than that (not wanting to see something I've worked on for a few years become less useful, for example), but it was the main one in starting PadMapper, and the main one in deciding to do this. He was saying that CL's actions seem to contradict that mission.
    • waterlesscloud 14y ago
      I'm curious, are you saying that you have no commercial plans for this at all?
      • ericd 14y ago
        I'm not saying that. Like any person, I'm more than 2D and have a whole bunch of motivations, but unlike most companies, making oodles of money isn't my main one for this, and so I don't prioritize it very much when it conflicts with other things. I find doing things that solve problems for people interesting and fulfilling, and that's primarily what motivated the creation of this.
• agscala 14y ago
  I kind of feel bad for Craigslist. Everyone is attacking them for wanting to hold onto their data. I don't think that they should be obligated to let just anyone scrape it
  • jonursenbach 14y ago
    No, but there is clearly use cases for Craigslist having an API. Instead of suing everyone who wants to use their data to make beautiful products, they should be giving people legal ways of doing so.
    • gamble 14y ago
      The problem for Craigslist is that the one thing people want is a better interface. If CL provides an API people can use to build an alternative frontend, and users start to go to these frontends instead of CL itself, there's nothing to stop those new frontends from extending CL with their own listings, and eventually extinguishing it. That was PadLister's business model.
      • iamwil 14y ago
        Padlister/Padmapper doesn't make money from from CL listings. Padlister charges money if listers listing directly on Padlister decides to use the online application.
    • robterrell 14y ago
      Apparently they offered PadMapper paid access but PadMapper declined. Articles like this make PadMapper look even worse to me. And sloppy journalism. Why won't anyone ask PadMapper why they decided against? This is like half of a linkbait article. The fact that CL offered paid access was in last week's HN stories. I bet there's a breathless follow-up article with that fact, trolling for additional page views.
      • Mazy 14y ago
        Craigslist offered padmapper a license for using their data in mobile applications only. They gave him no options for padmapper.com
• stfu 14y ago
  This anti Craigslist crusade is just ridiculous. The most impressive thing to me is how some startups that a knowingly violating TOS and intentionally abusing another site are able to gain that much traction for their "cause". Impressive PR/Buzz work!
  • iamwil 14y ago
    The press that you see is the result of users being disappointed at the current-state-of-affairs. They don't see it as being helpful for the long term innovation, or short term utility. Some of these users happen to be journalists. Other journalists are reporting it because how this is ruled will be precedence for future cases. I would say that's news. If you've ever met Eric (Padmapper is a one-man shop), you'll quickly get the sense that he isn't a slick-talkin' kind of guy. I can tell you that it is journalists that approached Eric, not the other way around.
    • mprovost 14y ago
      It's not like the press (ie paper newspapers like the NYT) is a neutral party in this - craigslist has pretty much destroyed one of their largest traditional sources of revenue (classifieds).
      • iamwil 14y ago
        Whether press is a neutral party or not is a separate issue of the assumption that it's PR work on Padmapper's part. The press may be having a field day, but it's not Eric's doing.
  • ericd 14y ago
    The NY Times writer reached out to me, not the other way around - I don't have a PR person.
  • azov 14y ago
    > knowingly violating TOS Writing something and calling it a TOS does not automatically make "violating" it illegal. Say, you can make yourself a t-shirt saying "Photographing me is prohibited", yet people still have a right to take pictures of you in public places. Regardless of what your t-shirt says. In offline world people have a legal right to use your data (your own likeness in this example) even if you object, and there are very good reasons why they have this right. I don't see why it should be any different online. PM is not abusing CL. PM is publishing facts about what is being posted to CL. This should qualify as protected speech and fair use. If the current law does not say so it is wrong and should be fixed.
• kyro 14y ago
  This is a pretty black-and-white issue for me, and I don't quite understand how so many are defending Padmapper. Much like the arguments for pirating music, it all boils down to weak justifications for taking something that's not yours. I get that you may need to bend rules to innovate and that they were pulling CL's data in a way that did not affect their bandwidth, but at the end of the day, it's Craigslist that has attracted the users, Craigslist that has engaged the user, and it's Craigslist that has acquired and recorded that data. The fact that Padmapper's UI is better is totally irrelevant and is just a way to distract from the real issue – blatant disregard of CL's wishes to hold on to its data. EDIT: Replies have made some good points, so this isn't so black-and-white to me anymore.
  • kemayo 14y ago
    That said, PadMapper's point about facts not being copyrightable seems to be correct, and Craigslist is suing over something it doesn't have any actual ownership of. Back when PadMapper was scraping the data itself, sure, there was a whole TOS / cost argument to be made. At that point I did think Craigslist was in the right. But that appears to have been gotten around completely legally, and Craigslist has moved into the position of being the bully in this argument.
  • sytelus 14y ago
    But, it's NOT Craiglist's data! The data was entered by users to Craiglist in order to share with others. The data is owned by users, not Craiglist. Most users use Craignlist under the assumption it being a "public good" site. If someone is not draining the bandwidth, the public data in Craiglist should be perfectly sharable. It's very clear that Craiglist had been betraying their user's trust for them being "public good" company. The public good companies don't hire top notch lawyers to go after copyright violations.
    • jessriedel 14y ago
      Well, craigslist's TOS says explicitly that you give them the right to your post, both to use and defend from scrapers. I guess you could argue that the users aren't aware of this, but I'd be surprised if better publicity of this would have a significant effect on the number of people posting to craigslist.
• wildmXranat 14y ago
  I recently saw a Toronto area Craigslist job posting for a 3Tap/Padmapper type of scraping contract, where it required the developer to have experience in spidering Craigslist, despite the whole ongoing debacle. Oh the irony. The whole thing stinks and Craigslist is completely right in putting a stop to data leeching. There isn't enough CSS3 candy that you can slap on top stolen data to wash it clean. It's a red herring argument that distracts from the main issue that they don't obey they rules of the site that feeds them.
• overgard 14y ago
  The thing that strikes me is that it would have been a lot smarter for craigslist to either buy padmapper or create their own version of it. I get craigslist general stance of keeping things simple because its hard to predict the consequences of changes (something that's been brought up in interviews w/ craig in the past), and the upsides of keeping the site as basic as possible, but with something like padmapper you can almost view it as being a real life proof of concept that's been shown to work. Obviously it's something people want, so why wouldn't they integrate it? I don't get the business goal here.
• learc83 14y ago
  Can anyone who supports Craigslist show me how, their selection and arrangement of facts are creative and original? Because if they aren't, their data isn't copyrightable. They don't select anything--there is no one at Craigslist performing a creative act of selection. Their arrangement of apartment listings isn't creative or original. It's based solely on geography, and time. I also don't think Padmapper is actually copying the arrangement. Furthermore even if there were actually copyrightable text within the individual ads, Padmapper doesn't copy the text, just the facts. You should read the Feist v. Rural decision if you want more information on copyrighting collections of facts.
• ggwicz 14y ago
  When, specifically, did taking another company's data and trying to build your own company around it become "innovating"? I am not saying such apps are useless; I'm building one now for a marketplace with pretty shitty UI. But it's not an innovation.
• CamperBob2 14y ago
  Something I think is being overlooked is that Craigslist's belligerent lawyers and antediluvian website hurt the people who really do own the ads, as much as they hurt the millions of users who have to sift through them. So... how about if Padmapper were to change its approach, and start acting like a value-added front end to Craigslist? Landlords and realtors could post their ads on Padmapper instead of going directly to Craigslist. Padmapper would then do two things: first, it would immediately forward a copy of each ad to Craigslist on the user's behalf, as if it had been posted there originally, and second, it would host the same ad itself, with all of the accompanying maps and metadata that Craigslist refuses to support. If a given ad was originally submitted to Padmapper, their right to show it would be absolutely indisputable. If Padmapper is indeed more user-friendly than Craigslist, then more and more users will come to rely on them, and ignore Craigslist altogether. At the same time, users who prefer to stick with Craigslist wouldn't see any disruption at all.
  • ericd 14y ago
    PadLister lets you submit to PadMapper and repost to other places, but I think that may actually be the sticking point, and might be harming PadMapper's efforts to be an effective search engine if it's viewed as competitive with other sources. So, I may need to shut it down to keep going with PadMapper's mission.
• graue 14y ago
  PadMapper seems to be on relatively solid legal ground here. They are only copying facts (address, price, contact info) and the post title (which is likely too short to qualify for copyright). And as they aren't accessing Craigslist directly, they aren't subject to its TOU. But what 3Taps, the other lawsuit target, is doing seems far less defensible. They use the trademarked name "Craigslist" prominently and repeatedly on their site to promote their service. See http://3taps.com http://3taps.com (screenshot at http://oi48.tinypic.com/1zx2qkk.jpg http://oi48.tinypic.com/1zx2qkk.jpg in case the design changes). Worse, the website Craiggers.com that's described in the lawsuit (and indeed registered to 3Taps) not only uses the trademark, but reproduces posts wholesale with the entire content and photographs. (Example: http://oi50.tinypic.com/5l9cvb.jpg http://oi50.tinypic.com/5l9cvb.jpg) At the bottom of each post it has a "public domain" mark and says "This work ([name] by [poster email]), identified by craigslist, is free of known copyright restrictions." This is clearly untrue: the photographs are creative and original works copyrighted to the poster (and licensed to Craigslist), as are the prose descriptions whenever they carry more than a bare minimum of information. I can't imagine what 3Taps is thinking. In contrast to the relatively cautious approach of PadMapper, they're being extremely brazen in copying everything from Craigslist and using its name to promote themselves. And if they get smacked down, PadMapper's lost its data source.
• jusben1369 14y ago
  There's a lot of discussions about the rights and wrongs of Craigslist approach. It seems to me though the seeds to destroying it are all here. When you enable a powerful ecosystem around your core offering you get a network effect. Whomever decides to build a replacement to Craigslist should put at the top of their list "Enable 3rd party developers to prosper from our core offering".