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Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

baligu.blogspot.com

11–20 of 209 posts

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#11
Nice, you take the time to craft your listing on craigslist and now you've lost the right to repost your listing ANYWHERE else. I think we can safely assume that craigslist has a monopoly in (free) online classifieds and this reeks of very anti-competitive behavior. Wonder what the DOJ thinks of this.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#12
From Wikipedia: "In December 2006, at the UBS Global Media Conference in New York, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster told Wall Street analysts that Craigslist has little interest in maximizing profit, instead it prefers to help users find cars, apartments, jobs, and dates."

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#13

Nice, you take the time to craft your listing on craigslist and now you've lost the right to repost your listing ANYWHERE else. I think we can safely assume that craigslist has a monopoly in (free) online classifieds and this reeks of very anti-competitive behavior. Wonder what the DOJ thinks of this.

This is a bit knee-jerk, no? I highly doubt you waive the right to repost your listing ANYWHERE; rather, this is legalese allowing them to sue anyone using their listings without consent.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#14
post #8

Does this license mean copyright? In Germany you cannot protect facts with copyright. Something like "Flat for rent: $size m², $price €, $coordinates, $link" seems more like a fact or an idea.

Also, in Germany you cannot give up or transfer copyright to someone else.

How does that work? If I write a book and then sell it to a book publisher and want to transfer all rights and copyrights? I can't?

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#16
post #12

From Wikipedia: "In December 2006, at the UBS Global Media Conference in New York, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster told Wall Street analysts that Craigslist has little interest in maximizing profit, instead it prefers to help users find cars, apartments, jobs, and dates."

There's a big gap between "little interest in maximizing profit" and "little interest in fending off existential threats," no?

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#17
IANAL, of course, but before we all bring out the pitchforks, what does the word "content" mean in

Clicking "Continue" confirms that craigslist is the exclusive licensee of this content

Does it refer, as many posters suggest below, to the item sold in the listing? Or does it only refer to the contents of the listing? If it's the former, I question its legal defensibility (oh man I'm not a lawyer, but I think that's right). If it's the latter, this is a clear pre-emptive move against future PadMapper-type problems.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#18
Saying you have something doesn't really mean you have something - I'm not sure that would stand in court. IANAL, of course, and anything can happen, especially in bizarro world of computerized information where there's no legal practice refined by hundreds of years of common sense applications, so such thing may probably be useful for Craigslist to go after some content scrappers. But I seriously doubt they would ever go after the post owner for reporting his own content.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#19
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, in Germany you cannot give up or transfer copyright to someone else.

How does that work? If I write a book and then sell it to a book publisher and want to transfer all rights and copyrights? I can't?

There is some information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_Germany#Transf...

It looks like you can't transfer copyright but you can exclusively licence it.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#20

Standard move I'd say. Stops people from making services that pull information from Craigslist and advertise it elsewhere.

It's not very standard. The standard text in a UGC site's terms is to grant a non-exclusive license to the submitted content, and does not grant the sole rights to enforce the copyright in that content. This text on the submission form is both new and non-standard; it doesn't even agree with what's in their TOS document. An exclusive license means landlords themselves are giving up their right to post the same listin…

Thanks for pointing this out Dan, I updated the post to include snippets of other popular terms. You're absolutely right.
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