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Craigslist Suing Padmapper

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Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#81

Post by nchuhoai »

nostromo wrote: post #60

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 was always wondering that. In essence, both cases appropriate CL's data for the users benefit, and both tend to send traffic back. I'm currently in a similar situation, where I have to ask myself how much i can scrape/aggregate/visualize 3rd party data that is useful to an user while stil providing value to the 3rd party.

I believe ultimately, it is at the 3rd partys (in this case Craigslist) discretion who is allowed to appropriate their data and who not.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#83

Post by philfreo »

rprasad wrote: post #35
picklefish wrote: post #15

Why 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.

Craiglist doesn't get traffic from PadMapper. PadMapper gets nearly all of its traffic from Craiglist. Craiglist can charge for mobile licenses because people want the traffic that Craiglist can bring them.

No, it's the other way around. I view real Craigslist pages but use Padmapper to get me there.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#84

Post by dkroy »

avolcano wrote: post #27
picklefish wrote: post #15

Why 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From a Wired article, circa 2009 (so this may be out of date): "Craigslist is not only gigantic in scale and totally resistant to business cooperation, it is also mostly free.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 prost…

Yeah, it doesn't seem like a smart business decision to me. It would just make sense to pursue this new revenue stream, and license out an API. This response just seems like more of an emotional response than a business strategy.

Edit: Not sure why this comment is getting down-voted, but if I offended some one that was not my intention.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#86

Post by baddox »

Maascamp wrote: post #43

The tone in this article is unbelievable. > The case raises questions over whether Craigslist is stifling innovation or simply protecting its data There is no question. Craigslist isn't stopping Padmapper from being built, its stopping Padmapper from using Craigslist data . The continuous attempts to reframe Craigslist's actions as an attempt to stifle innovation seem almost surreal. I just can't understand how a com…

I interpret this different. I certainly think that Craigslist is stifling innovation (perhaps purposefully, perhaps not), but simply stifling innovation is not illegal.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#87

Post by robomartin »

Here are a couple of legal questions (not taking sides, just honest questions):

Does the data belong to Craigslist or to those posting on Craigslist?

If so, is this in their TOS? I don't remember ever clicking a checkbox that says "we own your listing" whenever I have sold stuff on Craigslist or posted jobs/gigs. Maybe real estate is different.

Why would I want to give Craigslist ownership of my listing? If I were posting a property for rent I would probably want other services to pick-up the listing.

Similarly, why do they own the Copyright on something I have written?

Again, I don't remember ever giving that away either.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#88

Post by jetti »

nostromo wrote: post #60

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 you specifically grant access to your content using the robots.txt. If you don't want to have your site indexed, then you change your robots.txt. Or like it was said before, you ask Google to remove you from the index.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#89

Post by zspade »

Has there ever been any consideration at some kind of partnership? I know there may be some bad blood at this point, but I don't see how it wouldn't benefit both Padmapper and Craigslist to potentially work together to create an alternate Craigslist(using the same data). The contracts would have to be thorough about profit sharing, but it seems at least possible.

If people had a secondary Craigslist portal they could use to access the same data, while avoiding the shitty interface, more and more might migrate over to the new 'design'. The current Craislist design has been dated for some time, and I just can't see a startup or even a big player not moving into their space with a better design and interface.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#90

Post by keeptrying »

Heartbreaking.

Padmapper is the best apartment rental interface out there. The author has been single handedly working on this for 3-4 years and constantly improving his system.

Legally he might not have been in the right but we should be helping him out not uselessly debating and casting judgement.

If theres anyone who exmplifies the true spirit of Hacker News it would be the author of PadMapper.

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