Craigslist Suing Padmapper • Hacker News Board

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#121

Post by icebraining » Tue, Jul 24, 2012, 5:43 PM UTC

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…

It's not Craigslist data, it's the users'. They just have a license.

/pedant

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#122

Post by ori_b » Tue, Jul 24, 2012, 5:43 PM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #13

ori_b wrote: 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…

It only succeeds because it has a historical legacy that's proving difficult to displace. This is the same thing driving eBay. It's a difficult nut to crack. Kajiji seems to be gaining some traction, but it's trading one set of UX nightmares for another.

It is a difficult nut to crack. That doesn't give padmapper a license to scrape craigslist.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#123

Post by Goronmon » Tue, Jul 24, 2012, 5:44 PM UTC

patdennis wrote: post #25

My 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…

Yeah, I'm in a similar position. Every time I have to use Craigslist I come much closer to hating the team behind it. I mean, I know it's probably not rational, but I think they are being shitty people for locking up so much useful data behind a site that is designed to be miserable to use. It's pretty evil when you get down to it. It's obvious they don't care about users.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#124

Post by blorenz » Tue, Jul 24, 2012, 5:46 PM UTC

I hope that PadMapper does not back down. Craigslist is making their data publicly displayed. Consumers consume it - be it people or machines. It will be interesting how this plays out. Screen scraping is analogous to the analog loophole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_loophole.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#125

Post by learc83 » Tue, Jul 24, 2012, 5:46 PM UTC

hardtke wrote: post #113

eli wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this has any legal bearing for anyone, but it's worth noting that Google respects publishers who do not wish to be indexed.

Here's the abstract for a nice review of search engine law: http://works.bepress.com/james_grimmelmann/13/ If I remember correctly, indexing a site that asks to not be indexed might be illegal as an illegal tresspass, but it is not settled law. The argument is that you are stealing resources (computer time) from the site owner.

>The argument is that you are stealing resources (computer time) from the site owner.

That's why 3taps is getting the data from google's cache without touching craigslist servers.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#126

Post by IanDrake » Tue, Jul 24, 2012, 5:46 PM UTC

bluesnowmonkey wrote: post #118

debacle wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Craigslist doesn't needs to be removed from the search index. They just need to prevent caching of posts, which is what 3Taps was abusing. Noarchive in robots.txt ought to take care of that.

To your knowledge, is it against the law to not follow a site's robots.txt? I'm not aware of one, but I am curious.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#127

Post by alex_c » Tue, Jul 24, 2012, 5:47 PM UTC

IanDrake wrote: post #109

Kadrith wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does PadMapper respect the robots.txt file?

PadMapper uses 3Taps.com to get the data. 3Taps gets Craigslist data through Google. Google's bot respects robots.txt. So, yes. [edit for clarity, and for misspelling clarity]

Well... "sort of", then. PadMapper respects the robots.txt for GoogleBot, not for PadMapper.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#128

Post by jaems33 » Tue, Jul 24, 2012, 5:47 PM UTC

mootothemax wrote: post #33

I can't say that I'm that surprised; Padmapper wrote a whole blog post about how they were adding Craigslist support back to their site after being sent a C&D by Craigslist. It's a shame for the guy behind Padmapper, but hopefully there'll be a lesson learnt about knowing which fights are worth picking versus knowing when to move on. Somehow Google managed to overcome Yahoo and Altavista without scraping their data.…

Speaking of the UK, Foxtons also does a great job providing two interfaces for searching properties (list vs. map view) as well as organizing photos by room with specified dimensions. I wish their design was pretty much applied to Craiglist for property finding in the U.S.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#129

Post by kytmizuno » Tue, Jul 24, 2012, 5:47 PM UTC

rprasad wrote: post #55

astrodust wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Craiglist doesn't need to write those posts. Under their TOS, Craiglist has a license to the posts (which are copyrighted by their owners ). This license gives Craiglist the authority to enforce copyright against persons who interfere with Craigslists' license in the posts. Thus, the last sentence of their TOS is perfectly legal and enforceable. The license would not give Craiglist a license to do anything to other s…

From what I've read, only the actual copyright holder has the right to sue others for copyright infringement. See the Righthaven case from last year.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/09/righthaven-copyri...

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#130

Post by ig1 » Tue, Jul 24, 2012, 5:48 PM UTC

IanDrake wrote: post #109

Kadrith wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does PadMapper respect the robots.txt file?

PadMapper uses 3Taps.com to get the data. 3Taps gets Craigslist data through Google. Google's bot respects robots.txt. So, yes. [edit for clarity, and for misspelling clarity]

Presumably 3Taps violates Google's ToS to get the data from them ?