5 ms·

Craigslist, 3taps settle scraping/antitrust suits with $1M donation to EFF

55 points by sinak 11y ago

vdaniuk 11y ago
"Craigslist has pledged to donate $1 million of that to the Electronic Frontier Foundation over 10 years." is very different from what the title implies.
halflings 11y ago
"In the settlement, 3taps, PadMapper and Lovely will collectively pay Craigslist $3.1 million — $1 million from 3taps; $2.1 million from Lovely and nothing from PadMapper. Craigslist has pledged to donate $1 million of that to the Electronic Frontier Foundation over 10 years." They're not settling with $1M donation to EFF, they're still getting $2.1M from Lovely.
- genericuser 11y ago
  And assuming 10 equal payments at the end of each of the 10 years, each percentage point of average return Craigslist sees on that $1 million they earn 55,000. In addition to a getting to presumably write off some portion(all?) of the $100,000 they would be donating each year for tax purposes. So really they get more than $2.1M value out of this. Edit: Yes, I realize there is no reason I should assume 10 equal payments over 10 years, given the information available. It was just the closest thing to an 'average case' I could define for a situation like this.
  - tempestn 11y ago
    Actually if you read the settlement itself, it does explicitly say $100k per year for 10 years.
adam12 11y ago
The EFF was actually supporting Craigslist's opponents in the lawsuit. I wonder how much the Craiglist cost the EFF.
doorty 11y ago
How does one go about upsetting this giant in the marketplace? Everyone wants a better craigslist, but it's useless if they don't have the content.
- 55555 11y ago
  Start super niche and expand in concentric circles, I guess. It's tough because people don't exactly look for new houses every single day so coming up in their brain as the app/site of choice when they do need a new house/apt is difficult. I would hate to do a "better apartment finder" startup in this space (airbnb excluded). I think craigslist grew pretty slowly over the course of a decade, right? Not sure there's a recipe for overtaking them quickly that doesn't involve using their data/userbase in one form or another.
  - prawn 11y ago
    You might almost need to loss lead for years, paying people in some fashion to bring content. e.g., dress up listings similar to the way Airbnb sends out their photographer to shoot your place professionally, or Uber is subsidising drivers to establish a foothold. If you did car sales (as a bad example), you could handle the entire process for customers - sending out a photographer, building the listing and researching an appropriate list price. Wear the costs until you have the brand established and can start to make money. That would probably be attractive to people who don't have time or aren't confident enough to do it all themselves.
    - git-fucked 11y ago
      Part of what attracts people to places like craigslist/gumtree is that you do it all yourself, though - it's easy to just take a couple of photos and provide a few details to advertise a car or house sale without a third party. If I wanted to have professionals take care of it I'd go to a sales garage or an estate agent.
      - prawn 11y ago
        People do it themselves because the garage or agent charges a fee. I'm saying that to tackle an incumbent, you could offer that service (and better) for free to win customers across. I disagree that it's easy to take decent photos and then deal with a sales process (fielding calls, negotiating, etc). I have dozens of things I could sell but don't because it's too much effort and I don't have time.
tomschlick 11y ago
The biggest thing that pisses me off about CL regarding house/apt listings is that they don't require addresses! How is their mapping feature supposed to work well if 70% of the listings are all grouped together with just the city name? No wonder people are trying to fork their business.
- tedunangst 11y ago
  How do the scrapers solve that problem? They scrape an address of "City". Now what?
zaidf 11y ago
Here's hoping Craigslist dies. The good news is: it is already dying(albeit slowly, one category at a time.)
- tehwebguy 11y ago
  I accidentally downvoted you, meant to upvote! Craigslist doesn't even do a half-assed job trying to keep spam off, it has officially settled into the same place as eBay for me: a big, slow, shitty incumbent.
- 1337biz 11y ago
  I don't. It is one of very few platform that don't bother me with all the clutter other websites have. No log-ins, subscribe-me, buy-premium, click-this-ad bs. It just delivers relevant information straight to the point.
  - zaidf 11y ago
    Airbnb killed short term rentals category. 42floors is killing the commercial rental category. OKC/Tinder killed the personals category. There are three main categories keeping it alive: apartments, jobs and for sale. Each of those categories are under attack from semi-successful startups but no homeruns...yet. If either For Sale or Jobs categories get an airbnb-like competitor, it will be a massive blow for CL. The former is its largest category. The latter makes it all the revenue. My hunch is that its Jobs category is already under attack and they are having a harder time making revenue resulting in their aggressive legal battles.
- angersock 11y ago
  It's pretty decent at what it does, though...? It solves the problem. It's ugly, sure, but a whole lot of people derive value from it, and that's what matters.
walterbell 11y ago
From a 2013 interview with Greg Kidd, http://thisweekinstartups.com/greg-kidd-of-3taps-twist-293/ http://thisweekinstartups.com/greg-kidd-of-3taps-twist-293/ "... this was decided by the supreme court definitively in unanimous decision regarding, for instance, phone numbers in the case Rural v. Feist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural) ... The facts are just facts. They are not creative expressions. They are descriptive information and as such are outside of the bounds of what copyright law was intended to cover. ... In other industries it is a long-standing practice of comparing prices, supply and demand. My background at the federal reserve tells me, that’s how markets work. The concept, that it is intellectual property, when it’s really just transparency of price, supply, and demand, and that’s how markets work, is a real stretch. It’s something that could, if it continues to go this way, it could, basically, break the Internet, where you have to have permission to compare prices, and compare supply and demand between different sources of goods and services. .. We just think that the business of “on-boarding” the postings and charging for it is entirely different from the search and downstream interaction."
IanDrake 11y ago
Had a similar project that monitored CL and sent alerts. Got and C&D, talked to a few lawyers and gave up. At least CL has an alert system now.
codecamper 11y ago
I talked with a friend of a friend one evening about his couple year old startup. He had taken a good chunk of money from VC for the sole purpose of fighting legal battles. His IP sounded novel & interesting, but the incumbent was suing anyway. It's a money game.

55 points by sinak 11y ago

"Craigslist has pledged to donate $1 million of that to the Electronic Frontier Foundation over 10 years." is very different from what the title implies.

halflings 11y ago

"In the settlement, 3taps, PadMapper and Lovely will collectively pay Craigslist $3.1 million — $1 million from 3taps; $2.1 million from Lovely and nothing from PadMapper. Craigslist has pledged to donate $1 million of that to the Electronic Frontier Foundation over 10 years." They're not settling with $1M donation to EFF, they're still getting $2.1M from Lovely.

genericuser 11y ago
And assuming 10 equal payments at the end of each of the 10 years, each percentage point of average return Craigslist sees on that $1 million they earn 55,000. In addition to a getting to presumably write off some portion(all?) of the $100,000 they would be donating each year for tax purposes. So really they get more than $2.1M value out of this. Edit: Yes, I realize there is no reason I should assume 10 equal payments over 10 years, given the information available. It was just the closest thing to an 'average case' I could define for a situation like this.
- tempestn 11y ago
  Actually if you read the settlement itself, it does explicitly say $100k per year for 10 years.

adam12 11y ago

The EFF was actually supporting Craigslist's opponents in the lawsuit. I wonder how much the Craiglist cost the EFF.

doorty 11y ago

How does one go about upsetting this giant in the marketplace? Everyone wants a better craigslist, but it's useless if they don't have the content.

55555 11y ago
Start super niche and expand in concentric circles, I guess. It's tough because people don't exactly look for new houses every single day so coming up in their brain as the app/site of choice when they do need a new house/apt is difficult. I would hate to do a "better apartment finder" startup in this space (airbnb excluded). I think craigslist grew pretty slowly over the course of a decade, right? Not sure there's a recipe for overtaking them quickly that doesn't involve using their data/userbase in one form or another.
- prawn 11y ago
  You might almost need to loss lead for years, paying people in some fashion to bring content. e.g., dress up listings similar to the way Airbnb sends out their photographer to shoot your place professionally, or Uber is subsidising drivers to establish a foothold. If you did car sales (as a bad example), you could handle the entire process for customers - sending out a photographer, building the listing and researching an appropriate list price. Wear the costs until you have the brand established and can start to make money. That would probably be attractive to people who don't have time or aren't confident enough to do it all themselves.
  - git-fucked 11y ago
    Part of what attracts people to places like craigslist/gumtree is that you do it all yourself, though - it's easy to just take a couple of photos and provide a few details to advertise a car or house sale without a third party. If I wanted to have professionals take care of it I'd go to a sales garage or an estate agent.
    - prawn 11y ago
      People do it themselves because the garage or agent charges a fee. I'm saying that to tackle an incumbent, you could offer that service (and better) for free to win customers across. I disagree that it's easy to take decent photos and then deal with a sales process (fielding calls, negotiating, etc). I have dozens of things I could sell but don't because it's too much effort and I don't have time.

tomschlick 11y ago

The biggest thing that pisses me off about CL regarding house/apt listings is that they don't require addresses! How is their mapping feature supposed to work well if 70% of the listings are all grouped together with just the city name? No wonder people are trying to fork their business.

tedunangst 11y ago
How do the scrapers solve that problem? They scrape an address of "City". Now what?

zaidf 11y ago

Here's hoping Craigslist dies. The good news is: it is already dying(albeit slowly, one category at a time.)

tehwebguy 11y ago
I accidentally downvoted you, meant to upvote! Craigslist doesn't even do a half-assed job trying to keep spam off, it has officially settled into the same place as eBay for me: a big, slow, shitty incumbent.
1337biz 11y ago
I don't. It is one of very few platform that don't bother me with all the clutter other websites have. No log-ins, subscribe-me, buy-premium, click-this-ad bs. It just delivers relevant information straight to the point.
- zaidf 11y ago
  Airbnb killed short term rentals category. 42floors is killing the commercial rental category. OKC/Tinder killed the personals category. There are three main categories keeping it alive: apartments, jobs and for sale. Each of those categories are under attack from semi-successful startups but no homeruns...yet. If either For Sale or Jobs categories get an airbnb-like competitor, it will be a massive blow for CL. The former is its largest category. The latter makes it all the revenue. My hunch is that its Jobs category is already under attack and they are having a harder time making revenue resulting in their aggressive legal battles.
angersock 11y ago
It's pretty decent at what it does, though...? It solves the problem. It's ugly, sure, but a whole lot of people derive value from it, and that's what matters.

walterbell 11y ago

From a 2013 interview with Greg Kidd, http://thisweekinstartups.com/greg-kidd-of-3taps-twist-293/ http://thisweekinstartups.com/greg-kidd-of-3taps-twist-293/ "... this was decided by the supreme court definitively in unanimous decision regarding, for instance, phone numbers in the case Rural v. Feist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural) ... The facts are just facts. They are not creative expressions. They are descriptive information and as such are outside of the bounds of what copyright law was intended to cover. ... In other industries it is a long-standing practice of comparing prices, supply and demand. My background at the federal reserve tells me, that’s how markets work. The concept, that it is intellectual property, when it’s really just transparency of price, supply, and demand, and that’s how markets work, is a real stretch. It’s something that could, if it continues to go this way, it could, basically, break the Internet, where you have to have permission to compare prices, and compare supply and demand between different sources of goods and services. .. We just think that the business of “on-boarding” the postings and charging for it is entirely different from the search and downstream interaction."

IanDrake 11y ago

Had a similar project that monitored CL and sent alerts. Got and C&D, talked to a few lawyers and gave up. At least CL has an alert system now.

codecamper 11y ago

I talked with a friend of a friend one evening about his couple year old startup. He had taken a good chunk of money from VC for the sole purpose of fighting legal battles. His IP sounded novel & interesting, but the incumbent was suing anyway. It's a money game.