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Craigslist Suing Padmapper

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Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#381

Post by ChuckMcM »

Goronmon wrote: post #234
nlh wrote: post #138

I find this sort of thing very frustrating to read: "The search tool is antiquated, the images are poor or nonexistent, locations of listings are hardly dependable, and you can forget about an integrated way to save anything for later reference. There is a litany of shortcomings that come with the Craigslist apartment search; they are many and they are painful..." If you don't like the site, don't like the UI, and ca…

If you don't like the site, don't like the UI, and can't stand the UX, then don't use the site. Nobody is forcing you to search for an apartment on CL. Nobody is forcing owners to list apartments on CL. Apartments aren't a fungible item. If I'm looking for an apartment in a certain area and 75% of the apartments in that area are only being listed on Craigslist, then how can I realistically "choose" to use another ave…

I think you are looking at this backwards. How many listings are there on Craigslist for a given city? 100, 200, 500, 1000? (I know city dependent)

There is absolutely no reason that PadMapper cannot call them on the phone, and ask them to list with PadMapper. They can make it trivially easy supporting email, phone, or fax listings. They can sell them on using PadMapper.

Many apartments are owned by Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) there are dozens (not hundreds) of those. You can sell the REIT on the concept of easy listings that are so much better/cleaner/easier than Craigslist.

Craigslist was created when near every apartment was listed in the Classified Ads in the print newspaper. That wasn't "lock in" it was an opportunity, they sold these folks on lower costs (since Classifieds were a money fund for newspapers) Landlords hated the extortionate prices that the newspapers charged but they didn't have an alternative, Craigslist gave them that alternative, they moved.

So the 'answer' here is to actually build a classifieds business around rental space. That takes more than slinging some node.js and scraping other sites. Granted its 'easier' for a technical person to do it that way, but its not a 'sustainable' way of doing it.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#382

Post by jacoblyles »

DanBC wrote: post #192
moron wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it is effectively shutting down Padmapper. Apartment listings are on Craigslist. As I have said elsewhere, I think Craigslist are within their rights here, but the situation still sucks. People want to browse apartment listings on a map, and Craigslist won't let us.

It seems that Craigslist sucks for people trying to find a property. Does it suck for people on the other end - people with a property that they'd like to rent to others? Why hasn't some other solution come onto the market to fix the problems of craigslist?

>"Why hasn't some other solution come onto the market to fix the problems of craigslist?"

Monopoly power.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#383

Post by res0nat0r »

stcredzero wrote: post #377
res0nat0r wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you did post some facts about your listing to CL, it is also well within Craigslists right to allow others to copy it or not. Just because you supplied the data to CL doesn't mean you can dictate to them how they should run their business.

A copyright clause designed to allow Craigslist to stop abuse shouldn't be used to squash competitors. That's not dictating "how they should run their business." That's telling them to stop being selfish.

How are they trying to squash competition? Padmapper isn't free to have users submit their listings to their own website?

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#384

Post by dangrossman »

fleitz wrote: post #320
debacle wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hadn't actually dug into the ToS, but the bit: > 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... Seems to be vital to this case.

Yes, the key point would be unauthorized, CL is going to have to prove that the PadMapper's usage was unauthorized (by the owner of the data)

That's a given. The only way they'd have authorization by the owners of the data would be to e-mail the poster of every CL listing and ask for it. We know they don't do that. The key point is whether there's copyright infringement at all, not whether it was authorized.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#385

Post by enduser987 »

Ha. They need to sue Google and other search engines that provide caches. Good luck with that.

Second, it's not infromation that's protectable by copyright (at least not in the US). It's like the telephone book as others have said.

There's heaps of websites that mistakenly believe they have some copyrights to assert against users that harvest data. But it's not just websites. A longstanding, classic example of this sort of silly argument is WHOIS. The registries can't stand the thought of others getting the data. They claim bandwidth is an issue. Yet they won't provide (mirrored) bulk data, which would easily resolve any such bandwidth claims. They purport to "license" the right to do things with the data, yet they have no rights to grant to begin with. It is public data.

Then there's the "spam issue". As if email is somehow different from direct mail, and from telemarketing. Why don't we outlaw those practices?

Anyhow, again, it's public data: addresses and phone numbers. We call it the telephone book. If, e.g., a brokerage wants to have its summer interns do cold calling to solicit new institutional investors, the interns do not need a "license to use the telephone book". If someone listed in the phone directory does not want to be called, there's no law that says they have to be listed; they can use a nonlisted phone number.

People who list with CL presumably want their information to be found and to be presented in an appealing way. Maybe not exclusively on CL. Maybe CL should ask them what they would prefer.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#386

Post by operand »

cft wrote: post #353
malandrew wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh oh... Bye bye Google and all search engines.

Google obeys robots.txt file. Padmapper does not. That's a critical difference.

CL's robot.txt file does not 'disallow' crawling the real estate section. So Padmapper was likely as compliant as Google.

http://www.craigslist.org/robots.txt

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#387

Post by natrius »

learc83 wrote: post #368
debacle wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hadn't actually dug into the ToS, but the bit: > 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... Seems to be vital to this case.

Rightshaven (copyright troll) was granted the same right by the copyright holders they represent, yet the judge ruled they didn't have standing to sue on the copyright holder's behalf.

The Righthaven case is slightly different, though I hope the logic still applies. (I'm not a lawyer, but I read the Righthaven opinion[1] when the Padmapper/3Taps workaround was originally discussed.) The difference is that Righthaven was granted merely the right to sue on behalf of the original copyright holder, but none of the exclusive rights that copyrights actually bestow upon their owners. It could be interpreted that posters grant Craigslist some of their exclusive rights ("copy, perform, display," etc.), and suing to protect those rights may be legally kosher. I know of no such precedent.

My personal interpretation/hope is that the right to sue for copyright infringement is nontransferable, which would give Craigslist no standing to sue. Individual posters could sue, however.

[1] https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/righthaven_v_dem/order6-1... (See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Righthaven_LLC_v._Democratic_Un...)

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#388

Post by csallen »

res0nat0r wrote: post #366
pg wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People posting ads on Craigslist do not necessarily want or intend for it to be reposted on other sites." That argument appears to be invalidated by Craiglist's own terms of use, which say that when you upload a listing to Craigslist they can syndicate it wherever they want ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4287519 ).

The key point is that the TOS says that you grant Craigslist the right to redistribute your listing where ever they see fit, it doesn't say some third party entity has the right to do that.

As far as I'm aware, if you post information in a place where it will be publicly accessible, then you are tacitly agreeing that third parties will be able to access it and use it as they please. That's not a right that needs to be given to these third parties. It exists from the get-go, and must be explicitly taken away by something like copyright.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#389

Post by slowpoison »

iandanforth wrote: post #325
warfangle wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

The grant is not exclusive and the authority to decide what is an is not authorized is not claimed by CL. If it is unauthorized they claim rights and causes. You can't have a non-exclusive grant without this distinction.

The ToS may not mention exclusivity, but the source of data (for Padmapper) is Craigslist. Thus, the clause of "unauthorized copying" applies.

Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper

#390

Post by iamanerd »

Does accessing a page in a search engine cache provide assent to the terms of service for the cached page? What if the user has never even visited the cached website?

C'mon HN users. Use your noodle!

CL, which is supposed to be a free service, is looking quite petty here. Baseless lawsuits are more what we'd expect from a PadMapper-like site, which are a dime-a-dozen.

The wonderful thing about the US is almost anyone can sue almost anyone else and assuming the court rules are followed, the filing will be accepted. A "live" lawsuit is only a matter of paying a lawyer.

Of course, how long the suit live will depend on facts.

Others have tried these TOS arguments (where the user has visited the site, not simply a cached page in a search engine) and they have failed.

If you want to stop scraping, then do not put the data on the public web.

Put it behind password access and your chances in court increase exponentially.

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