10 ms·

3Taps Files Countersuit, Says Craigslist Is Anticompetitive

53 points by sbashyal 14y ago

res0nat0r 14y ago
This is like scraping Amazons reviews since they are available via Google and claiming you can display that user submitted content how ever you like. I can't see 3Taps having much of any case here.
- chii 14y ago
  I don't see how 3Taps is any different a client than google is. Now, i dont know enough details, so i m not saying 3tap has a case. But, if they scrape data off craigslist, not via their api (to which they agreed to abide by terms and conditions), then they _do_ seem to have a case!
  - simplesimpl3 14y ago
    Is 3Taps different from Google simply because they show a map? Maybe CL should have terms for their general website that say data can be scraped and cached but that it must appear in the cache either exactly as it does on CL, or with some things missing, but not with anything added (e.g. a map).
    - mikeryan 14y ago
      3taps isn't a client application for Craigslist, they essentially turn CL's data into a feed and then sell it to folks who then create services on top of that data. Padmapper is a client of 3taps who's been the client app that most of this is focused on. BTW 3taps doesn't scrape CL, they actually pull CL's data from Google's Cache so they can't be accused of violating CL's TOS.
      - simplesimpl3 14y ago
        Yeah, it would be futile for CL to go after Padmapper, so they are going after 3Taps. Why would they be more worried about 3Taps? Because anyone can do what 3Taps is doing. Anyone can pull CL data from a search engine cache like 3Taps does. There's no need to go to CL. But one thing we know, if you look at the precedent, is that you can't sue Google and win. You either let them copy your site or opt out and lose the traffic. So what can you do? Sue Google users! As far as I'm concerned, that's all 3Taps is. They are just aggregating what they pull from the cache.
- zackzackzack 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping#Legal_issues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping#Legal_issues Hard to say what will happen. They will sure as shit get sued, but what will happen is up in the air as far as I can tell. If I remember correctly, if you are somehow changing or making new content from the data, then it is protected under fair use somehow.
- tiddchristopher 14y ago
  It's not at all like that. The interesting thing seems to be the claim that Craigslist posts lack creativity, which Amazon reviews certainly do have. 3Taps is claiming the posts can't be protected by copyright, because you can't copyright facts. I think their case has merit.
  - res0nat0r 14y ago
    Are 3Taps verifying by hand that every scraped post are only facts? I've seen some pretty creative CL posts. Also it's been mentioned that assemblages of facts can in fact be copyrighted. See the Farmers Almanac.
    - tiddchristopher 14y ago
      You're right about that, and I think that's going to make their claim a bit unsteady. But I see an argument they might make: 1. Classified ads are facts, with negligible creativity put into their composition. 2. Facts are not copyrightable. 3. Therefore, 3Taps can scrape the ads. 4. If any ad actually does have creativity / an applicable copyright, the copyright holder can contact 3taps with a complaint. Basically a "safe harbor" take on the whole thing. What do you think?
      - bathat 14y ago
        Feist v. Rural (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural) seems to indicate the the arrangement of the facts is copyrightable, (if there is even a minimal degree of creativity) even though the facts themselves are not. The court held the alphabetic arrangement of names is not sufficient to warrant copyright protection, and it seems logical that mere temporal arrangement of classifieds would not merit protection either. However, it seems as though 3Taps would need to find a way to rearrange the facts presented within the advertizement, because that certainly is a creative process. The seller has the freedom to write text a description and include pictures. Photographs have a long history of copyright protection, as does written work. Simply copying the specification sheet for a particular model of TV into the ad, for example, might not be copyrightable, but how does 3Taps sort those from the rest? I just stole this from a random Craigslist ad: "Black futon in good condition. The mattress is a lot thicker than most futons. It is pretty easy to assemble. You must be able to pick it up though because I do not have a truck. I am moving in a week so I need to get rid of it, asking for 100 or better offer. Please use the link above to email me. " That the object is a futon, that said futon is black, thicker than average, easy to assemble and in good condition are all facts. The seller could have presented those facts in any number of ways, but he or she chose this way (proper spelling, for example, and mostly written in complete sentences) because he or she thought that would generate a better response. The only way I can see 3Taps on solid ground is if they can take the ad text, use it to generate a set of facts, and rewrite the ad from that (analogous to the way the PC BIOS was reverse-engineered, but done mechanically (I can't imagine it would scale well to have humans rewrite the ads))
- natrius 14y ago
  I don't know of any precedent that gives sites that accept user-generated content grounds to sue when their users' copyrights are violated. I would like to hear of one.
  - simplesimpl3 14y ago
    Seconded. Certainly this issue has come up before. Maybe the fact there is no precedent tells us something? Who would benefit from keeping the issue undecided?
  - pyre 14y ago
    If you're scraping user-submitted content by accessing (e.g.) CraigsList, then I would think that CraigsList could try and claim that it was unauthorized access of their systems.
    - natrius 14y ago
      Agreed, but my understanding is that 3Taps pulled the listings via Google cache.
awolf 14y ago
I hope that 3Taps follows through. This countersuit may help set a clearer precedent for who owns the data posted on public forums and what third party developers should be allowed to do with it. Earlier this year I was searching for an apartment in San Francisco. Craigslist was my only source for places to apply. The good apartments got snatched up pretty fast so I wanted a way to make sure I saw every listing that came through. The problem: there are easily 500 new listings added every day, and approximately 20% of these were re-posts of the same place. It's very difficult and draining, just trying to keep track of what you've already seen and where you left off since the last time you checked. So I did what any self respecting iOS developer would do: I made an app. It worked pretty much like an email inbox. Each new listing was like a new message. Refreshing the feed was like checking your email. Reposts were marked. You could bookmark and store things. The app colored the message cells based on whether they were from the most recent import or not (i.e. the app keeps your place). The best part? It worked pretty damn well. I gave it to a few other people via Test Flight and they were hooked as well. So, again, I did what any self respecting iOS developer would do: I put the app on the App Store. I figured that since my app was exclusively a craigslist client - a tool to make using craigslist better - I might have a better chance of not incurring craigslist's wrath. I put it on sale for $3.99 (it's called Craigslist Commando, if you're curious) and hoped for the best. The app did pretty well given that I did zero promotion for it. It was brining in around $30-40/day after Apple's cut. Unfortunately, my hopes for escaping craigslist's wrath did not pan out. I received a cease and desist letter from them two weeks ago. I'm still waiting on hearing back from them. They've gone silent on me after our initial contact in which they told me to expect a draft licensing agreement. I'm guessing they went silent because they have bigger things on their plate right now. I have opted to keep the app in the store during this time, but I'm not very optimistic that craigslist's licensing terms will be tenable. All of this to say: I have a pony in this race. I respect craiglist's rights to do what they think is necessary to protect their business. However something about this just doesn't jive for me: a) People go to craigslist and create content about some aspect of their lives. They, as the original authors of the content, post it to craiglist with the intention that the general public can see it. b) Other people go to craigslist to view content posted to a public forum in hopes of finding something. This process is frustrating and difficult. c) I create a tool that makes the process of finding something on craigslist less frustrating and difficult. d) Craigslist threatens to sue me for creating the that tool. This despite the fact that I'm helping both: the original authors of the content who would like to have their posts seen by their target audience and, the viewers of the content by making the viewing process more efficient. I suppose craigslist has these rights. But it just doesn't seem right.
ujeezy 14y ago
Direct link to the counterclaim: http://3taps.com/papers/3taps-answer-counterclaim.pdf http://3taps.com/papers/3taps-answer-counterclaim.pdf As a developer who received a C&D from Craigslist for a pretty innocuous app (seriously, it was built in a weekend), I'm glad to see someone test Craigslist's legal position in court. At the very least, I hope it will expose that Craigslist is not just a happy, hippy-infused neighborhood listserve like many seem to think; rather, like most other companies, it actually goes to great lengths to quash threats to its very profitable business.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ghshephard 14y ago
The irony is that if Craigslist would just take the time and effort to add a bit more functional / elegant interface, these third parties would have no reason to exist, and all the legal matters would disappear I understand that Craigslist wants to "Serve their community" and believes that changing their interface would interfere with that mission somehow (both, in terms of having to charge more in order to hire UI people, as well as engineer their Ops environment to handle additional load), but, I have to believe their is some way of simultaneously serving their community, providing a rapid response, as well as keeping their cost and overhead down while at the same time slapping a somewhat more elegant GUI and Search Interface.
- mratzloff 14y ago
  It's just fear of screwing up a winning formula. Craigslist is making money hand over fist; they could hire some front end guys if they wanted to.
  - ghshephard 14y ago
    Well, they are also concerned about (A) Increasing their overhead, and (B) screwing up their uptime by introducing complexity (requiring even more investment in Ops) and finally (C) slowing down their responsiveness (once again, requiring investment in Ops, and Hardware, and engineering to get back that speed) They really buy into the KISS principle over there, and it's worked well for them, but, the industry has moved forward, and it is possible to (affordably) add design and search flexibility without screwing up your uptime/responsive time.
graue 14y ago
I read the core of 3taps' counterclaim — pages 25-30 — and I recommend it. It's a good read. Specifics of 3taps' scraping aside, I'm starting to see that this is a particular case of a general problem that also applies to Twitter, with its recent API changes. They and Craigslist each control access to an extremely large and growing volume of user-generated content that people post there with the intention of making public. Users post that content to Craigslist/Twitter primarily because each is the largest website of its type. And both sites are, increasingly, trying to preserve their control by restricting third-party access to the UGC inside them, at the cost of reduced innovation. It's worth dwelling on the fact that large, powerful corporations can be built off the backs of user-generated content in this way. What do you do when a service like this adds a term in their TOU that you don't like? When their web UI is lacking basic functionality? Runs really slow? Doesn't work in your favorite browser? In any of these cases, you hit a big roadblock, because you don't really have a choice. The content is on Craigslist/Twitter — even though these companies did not create it. This problem seems to be one that will recur over and over on the internet. I can see three main avenues to fight it: 1. Technological — Create decentralized services that are competitive with, and somehow eventually overtake, the centralized ones. This is what StatusNet, Tent.io and several other efforts are trying to do in the social networking space. But this is hard. Decentralization makes it much more complicated to even build a working service at all, let alone one with a consistent, smooth and intuitive user experience. And success would result in less profit, compared to solving the much easier problem of building a successful centralized service. So developers who could pull this off are strongly incentivized not to. 2. Organizational — Start nonprofit organizations that are committed to interoperability and innovation in their bylaws, and have them run centralized services. This has been done successfully at least once: Wikipedia, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Their nonprofit status doesn't mean everyone is happy with their management, or that Wikipedia is perfect. But they provide full data dumps, and the content is under a free license, and their Statement of Purpose (https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws#ARTICLE_II_-_STATEMENT_OF_PURPOSE https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_by...) would make it hard to justify changing that. So, no matter what, you can always innovate with content on Wikipedia. Wikipedia was the first site of its kind, so it got big the same way major commercial sites did — by having the right idea and execution at the right time. It would be hard to replicate that success in 2012 by creating a nonprofit-owned Twitter clone. But now that Wikipedia is established, it seems to work. 3. Legal — Just as there are privacy protections in the law (moreso in the EU than the US), so could there be regulatory requirements for web services over a certain size to allow some degree of interoperability. If we don't find some kind of solution, I imagine that in 5 or 10 years, large incumbent internet sites like Twitter, Craigslist and heck, let's throw Facebook in there as well, could be the new RIAA and MPAA, using the aggregate value of their content to bludgeon competitors into submission and restrict innovation, to the detriment of the public, except that in this case, it's that very public that created the content enabling these companies to bully others in the first place. Craigslist v. 3Taps is not the end of this.
kefs 14y ago
People with the pitchforks seem to be forgetting something.. 3Taps is not scraping Craigslist. Google is scraping Craigslist, and 3Taps is scraping Google. As far as common sense is concerned, Craigslist has no say concerning 3Taps data.
- overcyn 14y ago
  Why not? The primary question here is whether 3taps is engaging in copyright infringement as Craigslist claims. Does everything scraped by Google becomes public domain? If Google News scrapes an article from the NYT, can I then scrape the article from Google and republish it?
creat0 14y ago
If Craigslist can assert copyright protection over classified ads and can make people grant exclusive licenses to the ads they submit, then why didn't newspapers do this before the web? Shouldn't there be a nice line of precedent for Craigslist to cite in its Complaint? I think those web developers who actually think they "own" UGC may be in for a rude awakening if something like this ever goes to trial. As a UGC site they are providing access, and that's all. There may soon come a day when users will not need third party websites in order to provide access to data they want to make public. Web developers should consider themselves lucky if they are running a UGC site and managing to make people believe they, not the users, own the content. Cease and desist letters alleging copyright infringement claims that have no legal basis (where is the case law that says anyone can copyright classified ads?) will only work for so long.
systemtrigger 14y ago
If 3Taps wins, the gold rush is on to create CL interfaces using 3Taps' API. The major roadblock becomes images. Image URLs are provided in 3Taps' API but since no one can hotlink to CL, images are useless. How do you build a better CL interface if you can't use images?
- creat0 14y ago
  Why do you need to hotlink? What is one more click? <img src="http://example.com/1.jpg">Photo</a> No. <a href="http://example.com/1.jpg">Photo</a> Yes.

53 points by sbashyal 14y ago

This is like scraping Amazons reviews since they are available via Google and claiming you can display that user submitted content how ever you like. I can't see 3Taps having much of any case here.

chii 14y ago
I don't see how 3Taps is any different a client than google is. Now, i dont know enough details, so i m not saying 3tap has a case. But, if they scrape data off craigslist, not via their api (to which they agreed to abide by terms and conditions), then they _do_ seem to have a case!
- simplesimpl3 14y ago
  Is 3Taps different from Google simply because they show a map? Maybe CL should have terms for their general website that say data can be scraped and cached but that it must appear in the cache either exactly as it does on CL, or with some things missing, but not with anything added (e.g. a map).
  - mikeryan 14y ago
    3taps isn't a client application for Craigslist, they essentially turn CL's data into a feed and then sell it to folks who then create services on top of that data. Padmapper is a client of 3taps who's been the client app that most of this is focused on. BTW 3taps doesn't scrape CL, they actually pull CL's data from Google's Cache so they can't be accused of violating CL's TOS.
    - simplesimpl3 14y ago
      Yeah, it would be futile for CL to go after Padmapper, so they are going after 3Taps. Why would they be more worried about 3Taps? Because anyone can do what 3Taps is doing. Anyone can pull CL data from a search engine cache like 3Taps does. There's no need to go to CL. But one thing we know, if you look at the precedent, is that you can't sue Google and win. You either let them copy your site or opt out and lose the traffic. So what can you do? Sue Google users! As far as I'm concerned, that's all 3Taps is. They are just aggregating what they pull from the cache.
zackzackzack 14y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping#Legal_issues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping#Legal_issues Hard to say what will happen. They will sure as shit get sued, but what will happen is up in the air as far as I can tell. If I remember correctly, if you are somehow changing or making new content from the data, then it is protected under fair use somehow.
tiddchristopher 14y ago
It's not at all like that. The interesting thing seems to be the claim that Craigslist posts lack creativity, which Amazon reviews certainly do have. 3Taps is claiming the posts can't be protected by copyright, because you can't copyright facts. I think their case has merit.
- res0nat0r 14y ago
  Are 3Taps verifying by hand that every scraped post are only facts? I've seen some pretty creative CL posts. Also it's been mentioned that assemblages of facts can in fact be copyrighted. See the Farmers Almanac.
  - tiddchristopher 14y ago
    You're right about that, and I think that's going to make their claim a bit unsteady. But I see an argument they might make: 1. Classified ads are facts, with negligible creativity put into their composition. 2. Facts are not copyrightable. 3. Therefore, 3Taps can scrape the ads. 4. If any ad actually does have creativity / an applicable copyright, the copyright holder can contact 3taps with a complaint. Basically a "safe harbor" take on the whole thing. What do you think?
    - bathat 14y ago
      Feist v. Rural (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural) seems to indicate the the arrangement of the facts is copyrightable, (if there is even a minimal degree of creativity) even though the facts themselves are not. The court held the alphabetic arrangement of names is not sufficient to warrant copyright protection, and it seems logical that mere temporal arrangement of classifieds would not merit protection either. However, it seems as though 3Taps would need to find a way to rearrange the facts presented within the advertizement, because that certainly is a creative process. The seller has the freedom to write text a description and include pictures. Photographs have a long history of copyright protection, as does written work. Simply copying the specification sheet for a particular model of TV into the ad, for example, might not be copyrightable, but how does 3Taps sort those from the rest? I just stole this from a random Craigslist ad: "Black futon in good condition. The mattress is a lot thicker than most futons. It is pretty easy to assemble. You must be able to pick it up though because I do not have a truck. I am moving in a week so I need to get rid of it, asking for 100 or better offer. Please use the link above to email me. " That the object is a futon, that said futon is black, thicker than average, easy to assemble and in good condition are all facts. The seller could have presented those facts in any number of ways, but he or she chose this way (proper spelling, for example, and mostly written in complete sentences) because he or she thought that would generate a better response. The only way I can see 3Taps on solid ground is if they can take the ad text, use it to generate a set of facts, and rewrite the ad from that (analogous to the way the PC BIOS was reverse-engineered, but done mechanically (I can't imagine it would scale well to have humans rewrite the ads))
natrius 14y ago
I don't know of any precedent that gives sites that accept user-generated content grounds to sue when their users' copyrights are violated. I would like to hear of one.
- simplesimpl3 14y ago
  Seconded. Certainly this issue has come up before. Maybe the fact there is no precedent tells us something? Who would benefit from keeping the issue undecided?
- pyre 14y ago
  If you're scraping user-submitted content by accessing (e.g.) CraigsList, then I would think that CraigsList could try and claim that it was unauthorized access of their systems.
  - natrius 14y ago
    Agreed, but my understanding is that 3Taps pulled the listings via Google cache.

awolf 14y ago

I hope that 3Taps follows through. This countersuit may help set a clearer precedent for who owns the data posted on public forums and what third party developers should be allowed to do with it. Earlier this year I was searching for an apartment in San Francisco. Craigslist was my only source for places to apply. The good apartments got snatched up pretty fast so I wanted a way to make sure I saw every listing that came through. The problem: there are easily 500 new listings added every day, and approximately 20% of these were re-posts of the same place. It's very difficult and draining, just trying to keep track of what you've already seen and where you left off since the last time you checked. So I did what any self respecting iOS developer would do: I made an app. It worked pretty much like an email inbox. Each new listing was like a new message. Refreshing the feed was like checking your email. Reposts were marked. You could bookmark and store things. The app colored the message cells based on whether they were from the most recent import or not (i.e. the app keeps your place). The best part? It worked pretty damn well. I gave it to a few other people via Test Flight and they were hooked as well. So, again, I did what any self respecting iOS developer would do: I put the app on the App Store. I figured that since my app was exclusively a craigslist client - a tool to make using craigslist better - I might have a better chance of not incurring craigslist's wrath. I put it on sale for $3.99 (it's called Craigslist Commando, if you're curious) and hoped for the best. The app did pretty well given that I did zero promotion for it. It was brining in around $30-40/day after Apple's cut. Unfortunately, my hopes for escaping craigslist's wrath did not pan out. I received a cease and desist letter from them two weeks ago. I'm still waiting on hearing back from them. They've gone silent on me after our initial contact in which they told me to expect a draft licensing agreement. I'm guessing they went silent because they have bigger things on their plate right now. I have opted to keep the app in the store during this time, but I'm not very optimistic that craigslist's licensing terms will be tenable. All of this to say: I have a pony in this race. I respect craiglist's rights to do what they think is necessary to protect their business. However something about this just doesn't jive for me: a) People go to craigslist and create content about some aspect of their lives. They, as the original authors of the content, post it to craiglist with the intention that the general public can see it. b) Other people go to craigslist to view content posted to a public forum in hopes of finding something. This process is frustrating and difficult. c) I create a tool that makes the process of finding something on craigslist less frustrating and difficult. d) Craigslist threatens to sue me for creating the that tool. This despite the fact that I'm helping both: the original authors of the content who would like to have their posts seen by their target audience and, the viewers of the content by making the viewing process more efficient. I suppose craigslist has these rights. But it just doesn't seem right.

ujeezy 14y ago

Direct link to the counterclaim: http://3taps.com/papers/3taps-answer-counterclaim.pdf http://3taps.com/papers/3taps-answer-counterclaim.pdf As a developer who received a C&D from Craigslist for a pretty innocuous app (seriously, it was built in a weekend), I'm glad to see someone test Craigslist's legal position in court. At the very least, I hope it will expose that Craigslist is not just a happy, hippy-infused neighborhood listserve like many seem to think; rather, like most other companies, it actually goes to great lengths to quash threats to its very profitable business.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

ghshephard 14y ago

The irony is that if Craigslist would just take the time and effort to add a bit more functional / elegant interface, these third parties would have no reason to exist, and all the legal matters would disappear I understand that Craigslist wants to "Serve their community" and believes that changing their interface would interfere with that mission somehow (both, in terms of having to charge more in order to hire UI people, as well as engineer their Ops environment to handle additional load), but, I have to believe their is some way of simultaneously serving their community, providing a rapid response, as well as keeping their cost and overhead down while at the same time slapping a somewhat more elegant GUI and Search Interface.

mratzloff 14y ago
It's just fear of screwing up a winning formula. Craigslist is making money hand over fist; they could hire some front end guys if they wanted to.
- ghshephard 14y ago
  Well, they are also concerned about (A) Increasing their overhead, and (B) screwing up their uptime by introducing complexity (requiring even more investment in Ops) and finally (C) slowing down their responsiveness (once again, requiring investment in Ops, and Hardware, and engineering to get back that speed) They really buy into the KISS principle over there, and it's worked well for them, but, the industry has moved forward, and it is possible to (affordably) add design and search flexibility without screwing up your uptime/responsive time.

graue 14y ago

I read the core of 3taps' counterclaim — pages 25-30 — and I recommend it. It's a good read. Specifics of 3taps' scraping aside, I'm starting to see that this is a particular case of a general problem that also applies to Twitter, with its recent API changes. They and Craigslist each control access to an extremely large and growing volume of user-generated content that people post there with the intention of making public. Users post that content to Craigslist/Twitter primarily because each is the largest website of its type. And both sites are, increasingly, trying to preserve their control by restricting third-party access to the UGC inside them, at the cost of reduced innovation. It's worth dwelling on the fact that large, powerful corporations can be built off the backs of user-generated content in this way. What do you do when a service like this adds a term in their TOU that you don't like? When their web UI is lacking basic functionality? Runs really slow? Doesn't work in your favorite browser? In any of these cases, you hit a big roadblock, because you don't really have a choice. The content is on Craigslist/Twitter — even though these companies did not create it. This problem seems to be one that will recur over and over on the internet. I can see three main avenues to fight it: 1. Technological — Create decentralized services that are competitive with, and somehow eventually overtake, the centralized ones. This is what StatusNet, Tent.io and several other efforts are trying to do in the social networking space. But this is hard. Decentralization makes it much more complicated to even build a working service at all, let alone one with a consistent, smooth and intuitive user experience. And success would result in less profit, compared to solving the much easier problem of building a successful centralized service. So developers who could pull this off are strongly incentivized not to. 2. Organizational — Start nonprofit organizations that are committed to interoperability and innovation in their bylaws, and have them run centralized services. This has been done successfully at least once: Wikipedia, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Their nonprofit status doesn't mean everyone is happy with their management, or that Wikipedia is perfect. But they provide full data dumps, and the content is under a free license, and their Statement of Purpose (https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws#ARTICLE_II_-_STATEMENT_OF_PURPOSE https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_by...) would make it hard to justify changing that. So, no matter what, you can always innovate with content on Wikipedia. Wikipedia was the first site of its kind, so it got big the same way major commercial sites did — by having the right idea and execution at the right time. It would be hard to replicate that success in 2012 by creating a nonprofit-owned Twitter clone. But now that Wikipedia is established, it seems to work. 3. Legal — Just as there are privacy protections in the law (moreso in the EU than the US), so could there be regulatory requirements for web services over a certain size to allow some degree of interoperability. If we don't find some kind of solution, I imagine that in 5 or 10 years, large incumbent internet sites like Twitter, Craigslist and heck, let's throw Facebook in there as well, could be the new RIAA and MPAA, using the aggregate value of their content to bludgeon competitors into submission and restrict innovation, to the detriment of the public, except that in this case, it's that very public that created the content enabling these companies to bully others in the first place. Craigslist v. 3Taps is not the end of this.

kefs 14y ago

People with the pitchforks seem to be forgetting something.. 3Taps is not scraping Craigslist. Google is scraping Craigslist, and 3Taps is scraping Google. As far as common sense is concerned, Craigslist has no say concerning 3Taps data.

overcyn 14y ago
Why not? The primary question here is whether 3taps is engaging in copyright infringement as Craigslist claims. Does everything scraped by Google becomes public domain? If Google News scrapes an article from the NYT, can I then scrape the article from Google and republish it?

creat0 14y ago

If Craigslist can assert copyright protection over classified ads and can make people grant exclusive licenses to the ads they submit, then why didn't newspapers do this before the web? Shouldn't there be a nice line of precedent for Craigslist to cite in its Complaint? I think those web developers who actually think they "own" UGC may be in for a rude awakening if something like this ever goes to trial. As a UGC site they are providing access, and that's all. There may soon come a day when users will not need third party websites in order to provide access to data they want to make public. Web developers should consider themselves lucky if they are running a UGC site and managing to make people believe they, not the users, own the content. Cease and desist letters alleging copyright infringement claims that have no legal basis (where is the case law that says anyone can copyright classified ads?) will only work for so long.

systemtrigger 14y ago

If 3Taps wins, the gold rush is on to create CL interfaces using 3Taps' API. The major roadblock becomes images. Image URLs are provided in 3Taps' API but since no one can hotlink to CL, images are useless. How do you build a better CL interface if you can't use images?

creat0 14y ago
Why do you need to hotlink? What is one more click? <img src="http://example.com/1.jpg">Photo</a> No. <a href="http://example.com/1.jpg">Photo</a> Yes.