After spending 2 weeks searching Craigslist posting for a new rental in SF, I'm convinced that Padmapper gains nothing by using their data. Most listings appear to be scams.
Craigslist Suing Padmapper
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Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#22A key part of building a business around stealing IP is getting acquired by a big firm that can fight legal battles. YouTube executed well on this plan; I'm curious how Padmapper planned for this obvious development.
Padmapper doesn't steal IP.
Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#23Why is craigslist going after people who bring them traffic? Is it because they don't bring in much money themselves so they have to sell licenses? I've never really thought about craigslists business model. I assume it's almost entirely ad based / premium placement of your ad on their site based.
Job listings in select cities cost money, I believe that's their only source of income.
Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#24Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4218714
Eric, everybody saw this coming.
Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#25My logical brain says that suing Padmapper is perfectly reasonable. My emotional brain is crying at the idea of using raw Craigslist ads to find an apartment the next time I move to a new city.
I move to a new city every year, usually on short notice, and I often go into the process of apartment hunting with no knowledge of local neighborhoods, the public transportation system, or general geography. Without Padmapper, the process would be unbearable.
Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#26Who didn't see this coming? I almost feel bad for Padmapper, but not really, because they should have known better.
If anyone is the party we should feel bad for in this case it's 3Taps. They seemed to be flying under the radar until Padmapper started using them.
Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#27Why is craigslist going after people who bring them traffic? Is it because they don't bring in much money themselves so they have to sell licenses? I've never really thought about craigslists business model. I assume it's almost entirely ad based / premium placement of your ad on their site based.
From a Wired article, circa 2009 (so this may be out of date):
"Craigslist is not only gigantic in scale and totally resistant to business cooperation, it is also mostly free. The only things that cost money to post on the site are job ads in some cities ($25 to $75), apartment listings by brokers in New York ($10), and—in a special case born of recent legal trouble—advertisements in categories commonly used by prostitutes, because authorities encourage vendors to maintain a record that would aid investigators. There is no banner advertising. They won't let you join them, and at this price you can't beat them either."
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_...
Usually, when companies get mad about scraping, it's because it's either bypassing the ads that make them money, or in rare cases bypassing a premium API. Here, PadMapper is doing neither.
In fact, if Craiglist is so committed to not updating their ugly website, why don't they just license out a public API, killing two birds (new monetization strategy and having a better interface for free) with one stone?
Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#28When you can't beat them, sue them into the ground. Craigslist is one of the poorest user experiences around and succeeds only because people insist on using it. The alternatives somehow manage to be even more spectacularly useless by over-designing their apps and cluttering them up with junk. Padmapper is one of the few that does what they're supposed to do, and it's not even an optimal implementation of this sort o…
"Craigslist is one of the poorest user experiences around and succeeds only because people insist on using it."
If a lot of people INSIST on using it, then that means it has good UX. Complaints with their UX should be qualified.
Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#29When you can't beat them, sue them into the ground. Craigslist is one of the poorest user experiences around and succeeds only because people insist on using it. The alternatives somehow manage to be even more spectacularly useless by over-designing their apps and cluttering them up with junk. Padmapper is one of the few that does what they're supposed to do, and it's not even an optimal implementation of this sort o…
When you can't beat them, steal their work product. Padmapper is (indirectly) screen-scraping Craigslist's data in an attempt to unseat Craigslist.
If these were articles written by professional writers, you might have a case. Instead these are posts written by many different individuals trying to advertise their properties.
Craigslist didn't write a single one of those posts. They try and assert control over this content through their terms of service:
"You automatically grant and assign to CL, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant and assign to CL, a perpetual, irrevocable, unlimited, fully paid, fully sub-licensable (through multiple tiers), worldwide license to copy, perform, display, distribute, prepare derivative works from (including, without limitation, incorporating into other works) and otherwise use any content that you post. You also expressly grant and assign to CL all rights and causes of action to prohibit and enforce against any unauthorized copying, performance, display, distribution, use or exploitation of, or creation of derivative works from, any content that you post (including but not limited to any unauthorized downloading, extraction, harvesting, collection or aggregation of content that you post)."
The last part of that may not be enforceable. They're asserting that they are singularly responsible for "authorizing" reproduction despite not having copyright for the material in question.
Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#30Just because you don't like the interface, does not give you license to steal their data. I think HN is fairly ugly, but that doesn't mean I have a right to scrape the site in order to reproduce a slightly better looking, for-profit clone. At least not without PG's express permission.
Yahoo search would be a hell of a lot better if they could just scrape results from Google, but thankfully they lack the misguided sense of entitlement that Padmapper seems to suffer from.