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Craigslist Suing Padmapper

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Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#151

Post by smackfu »

learc83 wrote: post #125
hardtke wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And makes it impossible to block them as a side effect.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#152

Post by sureshv »

rabidsnail wrote: post #92
debacle wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care you explain? I don't know what the CFAA is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act The relevant part of the act would be: "Intentionally accessing a computer without authorization to obtain ... information from any protected computer". A "protected computer" is a computer "which is used in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce or communication", which fits Craisglist pretty well. Violation of the clause I quoted is a criminal offense w…

That clause could be construed in any number of ways. Anyone accessing a web page could be liable if they have not 'obtained authorization' from the site owner.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#153

Post by adestefan »

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'm also pretty confident that if it was the opposite (PadMapper suing Craigslist for using PadMapper data), then most people would be cheering on PadMapper.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#154

Post by dap »

"You're not wrong, [Craigslist], you're just an asshole."

I don't know who's legally right, but I've got no sympathy for Craigslist. They've got a monopoly on the data (whether right or wrong) and refuse to either build a decent UI for consumers or let other people do so.

That sounds bad, but I think you can't know how infuriating it really is until you've tried to find housing in a town where CL is the only real option and where demand far exceeds supply (where you spend many, many hours on the effort because of intense demand-side competition).

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#155

Post by mikeryan »

learc83 wrote: post #133
ChuckMcM wrote: post #93

This isn't surprising of course, it is their data after all, but it brings up the 'easy problem' / 'hard problem' (E/H-P) conundrum quite nicely. The conundrum is that it is 'easy' to take an existing, quality data source, and re-skin it for broader market appeal. This is something that Craigslist should be doing but perhaps through poor management are not. It is 'hard' to take a conceptual model of skinning and buil…

>This isn't surprising of course, it is their data after all, But that's the thing. It isn't their data. They specifically say so in their TOS. The copyright belongs to the user. You can't say the listing belongs to the user (to protect you from liability) on one hand, and then say the data belongs to craigslist on the other. They could always do what map companies have done forever to prevent copyright. Facts can't…

I have no idea how this is going to playout but if there's a copyright argument to be made, it won't be on the copyright of each listing, but the copyright on the compilation of the listings.

You can't say the listing belongs to the user on one hand, and then say the data belongs to craigslist on the other.

You can in fact make this argument in the case of compilations in copyright law - think a compilation of short stories or one of those "Songs of the 90s albums" - the initial authors still own their work, but the entity which creates the compilation still owns the right to the entire compiled work.

(I intentionally edited your statement - don't want to bring liability into this, I think its a separate issue and a bit of a red herring w/r/t this discussion).

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#156

Post by fireflash38 »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #144
wickedchicken wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, an…

For that analogy to hold, PadMapper would have to be pulling data from a large number of sources. The value that Google News provides is that it aggregates a very large number of sources. PadMapper does not.

Padmapper collates data from multiple sources: Craigslist, Rent.com, Apartments.com, and "Others" (not sure which those would be).

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#157

Post by smackfu »

nostromo wrote: post #139
coliveira wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which shows just how much Google profits from their virtual monopoly. If content companies knew that Google would make billions of dollars selling advertisement based on the content that they generated, it would be very hard for Google to pull the massive Internet scrapping that they managed to do from day one. It is interesting that people understand the illegitimacy of taking data from a single content source (Crai…

Interestingly, Craigslist is being consistent when it comes to not allowing scrapers, including Google. http://www.craigslist.org/robots.txt edit: oops! they're not actually blocking google from the apartment listings. thanks smackfu.

Aren't they only disallowing particular pages there? Like apartments are at *.craigslist.org/apa/number.html which doesn't seem blocked by that robots.txt.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#158

Post by learc83 »

If you look at the case of Righthaven (copyright troll), a federal judge ruled that even though the copyright owner granted them a license to sue infringers to stop copying, Righthaven didn't have standing to sue because they didn't actually own the copyright.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#159

Post by wickedchicken »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #144
wickedchicken wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, an…

For that analogy to hold, PadMapper would have to be pulling data from a large number of sources. The value that Google News provides is that it aggregates a very large number of sources. PadMapper does not.

> PadMapper does not.

It does.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#160

Post by juiceandjuice »

rprasad wrote: post #45
_sentient wrote: post #30

Just 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 sen…

You actually do under the HN terms of use, which are permissive in the licenses they grant regarding HN posts. For example, see HN Magazine and various other HN-based sites and services. But as you note, the important thing here is the "license." Craigslist offers paid licenses to app develoeprs, which PadMapper chose not to pay for.

The license doesn't cover websites, only mobile applications.
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