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Craigslist Suing Padmapper

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Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#74

Commenters here make this sound like an open and shut case in favor of Craigslist. IANAL, so could someone explain why Google's index of material covered by copyright is ok and PadMapper's is not?

Most likely because Google aren't using their service to compete with, e.g., Craigslist. I also imagine that if you ask Google (especially with a C&D), they'll be more than happy to remove you from their index.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#75
post #17
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Craigslist is one of the poorest user experiences around and succeeds only because people insist on using it. So, to paraphrase, it only succeeds because something about it attracts customers. As opposed to other sites, which succeed by fairy dust and rainbows. If padmapper has a great user experience, that's wonderful -- They should be able to get customers to post their listings on it, and generate data without r…

Nah, they were pretty steadfast about offering only a mobile license and not being willing to talk about anything.

So because the private licensing terms offered were not optimal for PadMapper, it follows that PadMapper should just ignore their public licensing altogether?

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#76

Commenters here make this sound like an open and shut case in favor of Craigslist. IANAL, so could someone explain why Google's index of material covered by copyright is ok and PadMapper's is not?

Because if you ask Google to remove you from their index, they will.

Rupert Murdoch has threatened this in the past. Each time he's backed down, because he knows that being removed from Google's index is akin to being removed from the Internet.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#77

Commenters here make this sound like an open and shut case in favor of Craigslist. IANAL, so could someone explain why Google's index of material covered by copyright is ok and PadMapper's is not?

I agree that this isn't a simple open and shut case. But, I doubt that PadMapper will take things the distance before rolling over.

It's not a new thing for a start-up to use Craigslist to gain an advantage (i.e. AirBnB), but they all seem to eventually be cut-off.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#79
There's no doubting the legality of Padmapper scraping Craigslist data, so I think now would be a good time for him to innovate and really push his other product, PadLister. If Eric were to write another blog post, I'd make PadLister the focus of it and start building a new community there.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#80

"(Craigslist) said it offered a license that would have allowed PadMapper to use its data on mobile applications but that the competitor did not accept the terms." But on the other hand, "users and developers are exasperated with Craigslist’s insistence on preserving an outdated interface and design." I don't know the legal merits of either party's position, but from an ethical perspective, I tend to side with Craigs…

I see this from the opposite viewpoint, that PadMapper is operating as a search engine designed to help you find the right Craigslist posts for your apartment hunt. Claiming that PadMapper's success is from Craigslist failing to 'provide a good UI' is like suggesting that Google News' success is because newspaper companies failed to provide good article SEO. Instead, it's a different modality of content discovery, and it ultimately redirects you to the original source.

In my (personal) opinion, I would argue that the content providers or aggregators and search engines benefit synergistically. CL and Belgian newspapers appear to disagree.

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