Ask HN: Pure client-side PadMapper would be legal and easy, yeah?

#1

Post by eevilspock » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 8:03 PM UTC

PadMapper's new workaround based on 3Taps is being hotly debated today: http://blog.padmapper.com/2012/07/09/bringing-craigslist-back/. 3Taps claims that Craigslist listings are in the public domain. Whether or not you agree, PadMapper is in essence escaping Craigslist's lawyers simply by hiding behind 3Taps. But let me get to my questions.

PadMapper is really just an alternative view of Craigslist data. I don't see any functionality that couldn't be implemented purely on the client side, using for example Javascript executed as an extension or a bookmarklet. This client-side code would execute Craigslist searches, scrape the results, and render in the form that PadMapper does today. While the TOS can disallow other businesses from such scraping and re-publication, I can't see how Craigslist has any legal standing to disallow users from doing that for themselves (in which case it's personal use, not re-publication), whether they do so manually by jotting down listings on a notepad or automatically by running a script on their computer.

Can anyone give solid arguments against what I am suggesting?

Re: Ask HN: Pure client-side PadMapper would be legal and easy, yeah?

#2

Post by eevilspock » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 8:13 PM UTC

Eric DeMenthon, the man behind Padmapper, freely admits that "it still seems somewhat dickish to go against [Craiglist's] wishes." But he then proceeds to rationalize doing it anyway, using a "the good of the many outweighs the good of the few" argument:

"But then I did some back of the envelope estimates of how much of people’s time and effort it would waste if I didn’t, and it became clear how much less nice it is to waste the time of millions of apartment hunters out of stubbornness or some clearly inaccurate assumption about the will of the community."

If Eric is honestly doing this for the good of the community rather than for his own aggrandizement, and if I am right about the ethics and legality of a pure client-side solution, there is no excuse not to do it.

Re: Ask HN: Pure client-side PadMapper would be legal and easy, yeah?

#3

Post by ericd » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 9:34 PM UTC

eevilspock wrote: post #2

Eric DeMenthon, the man behind Padmapper, freely admits that "it still seems somewhat dickish to go against [Craiglist's] wishes." But he then proceeds to rationalize doing it anyway, using a "the good of the many outweighs the good of the few" argument: "But then I did some back of the envelope estimates of how much of people’s time and effort it would waste if I didn’t, and it became clear how much less nice it is…

I'm pretty confused by your argument. How is making a bookmarklet better morally or legally than just using an API, or less self-aggrandizing? Bookmarklets are disallowed by the TOU as well. Is it because I'd just be making hammers instead of making and using the hammers myself?

And yeah, I have a bit of a communistic bent, so needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few arguments sway my decisions pretty heavily.

Re: Ask HN: Pure client-side PadMapper would be legal and easy, yeah?

#4

Post by J3L2404 » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 10:16 PM UTC

ericd wrote: post #3

eevilspock wrote: post #2

Eric DeMenthon, the man behind Padmapper, freely admits that "it still seems somewhat dickish to go against [Craiglist's] wishes." But he then proceeds to rationalize doing it anyway, using a "the good of the many outweighs the good of the few" argument: "But then I did some back of the envelope estimates of how much of people’s time and effort it would waste if I didn’t, and it became clear how much less nice it is…

I'm pretty confused by your argument. How is making a bookmarklet better morally or legally than just using an API, or less self-aggrandizing? Bookmarklets are disallowed by the TOU as well. Is it because I'd just be making hammers instead of making and using the hammers myself? And yeah, I have a bit of a communistic bent, so needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few arguments sway my decisions pretty heavily.

Isn't PadLister a direct competitor? CL is right to tell you piss off. No one is falling for this "man of the people" crap, it just makes you look dumb. Sorry to be harsh but you seem to be deceiving yourself, why not start a legitimate business?

Re: Ask HN: Pure client-side PadMapper would be legal and easy, yeah?

#5

Post by chimi » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 11:29 PM UTC

A negligible population would use such a tool, not only because hardly anyone in the "real world" uses bookmarklets -- and then what about NOSCRIPT?, but the time it would take to scrape, process, geolocate, and present the apartment listing would dissuade the most diehard fans -- all that assuming of course you could get around the cross-domain JavaScript issues lurking around every corner.

It's just not a viable solution.

Re: Ask HN: Pure client-side PadMapper would be legal and easy, yeah?

#6

Post by fredglick » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 1:36 AM UTC

Try http://rentscoper.com instead. With heat maps that tell you if you are paying too much and Yelp ratings, it makes more sense.

Re: Ask HN: Pure client-side PadMapper would be legal and easy, yeah?

#7

Post by modarts » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 7:56 AM UTC

fredglick wrote: post #6

Try http://rentscoper.com instead. With heat maps that tell you if you are paying too much and Yelp ratings, it makes more sense.

That's actually a pretty terrible website on a few counts. A lot of tiles I tried didn't show the heatmap at all.

Re: Ask HN: Pure client-side PadMapper would be legal and easy, yeah?

#8

Post by ericd » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 10:06 AM UTC

J3L2404 wrote: post #4

ericd wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty confused by your argument. How is making a bookmarklet better morally or legally than just using an API, or less self-aggrandizing? Bookmarklets are disallowed by the TOU as well. Is it because I'd just be making hammers instead of making and using the hammers myself? And yeah, I have a bit of a communistic bent, so needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few arguments sway my decisions pretty heavily.

Isn't PadLister a direct competitor? CL is right to tell you piss off. No one is falling for this "man of the people" crap, it just makes you look dumb. Sorry to be harsh but you seem to be deceiving yourself, why not start a legitimate business?

PL was more of an insurance policy to collect feeds and other listings directly (it helps people post them back to CL). I'd be happy to take PL down if those were the terms for CL's complicity in keeping the CL search results.

Re: Ask HN: Pure client-side PadMapper would be legal and easy, yeah?

#9

Post by J3L2404 » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 11:56 AM UTC

ericd wrote: post #8

J3L2404 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't PadLister a direct competitor? CL is right to tell you piss off. No one is falling for this "man of the people" crap, it just makes you look dumb. Sorry to be harsh but you seem to be deceiving yourself, why not start a legitimate business?

PL was more of an insurance policy to collect feeds and other listings directly (it helps people post them back to CL). I'd be happy to take PL down if those were the terms for CL's complicity in keeping the CL search results.

>insurance policy...CL's complicity

What are you talking about? I can't parse this gibberish. I know you feel CL has no rights to their own site, but what the hell are they complicit in? The further you go down this road the more time you waste.

Re: Ask HN: Pure client-side PadMapper would be legal and easy, yeah?

#10

Post by ericd » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 12:26 PM UTC

J3L2404 wrote: post #9

ericd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PL was more of an insurance policy to collect feeds and other listings directly (it helps people post them back to CL). I'd be happy to take PL down if those were the terms for CL's complicity in keeping the CL search results.

>insurance policy...CL's complicity What are you talking about? I can't parse this gibberish. I know you feel CL has no rights to their own site, but what the hell are they complicit in? The further you go down this road the more time you waste.

Have I done something to offend you? I'm just saying that I made that in the hopes that if I ever had to take CL search results off, PadMapper wouldn't be mostly useless. If CL wanted me to take PL down as a condition of them being OK with my site searching theirs, I would make that trade happily. I'm explaining that my goal isn't to replace them/threaten them/etc.