Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting • Hacker News Board

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#111

Post by jeremyarussell » Wed, Aug 01, 2012, 2:43 PM UTC

hnriot wrote: post #108

jeremymims wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craigslist could: - kill Padmapper instantly by building a map function to view their listings. - elect not to build a map feature because they think it's trivial and they believe no one cares. So Padmapper should languish. - buy Padmapper for a little bit of money and have Eric help make their product better. - hire Eric to make their product better. - invest a little money into Padmapper as a hedge and hope it does…

This seems very naive to think that Craig gives a damn about padmapper, they (CL) have every right to license their data to whomever they want, and PM choose not to seek such a license so I seriously doubt Eric would really stand much of a chance getting a job with CL. You speak as though CL is broken, and it clearly isn't, as a marketplace it functions well. You may not like the website, but it's marketplace first,…

That's the thing though, remember that old adage "The customer is always right" it means that at the end of the day, right or wrong, good or bad, allowed or not-allowed, caring or cold, sue-happy or not if the people that use the website are complaining (and so far it seems they are) than cragislist is broken, because it's leadership lost the respect of it's market. There is absolutely nothing stopping someone from making a new place-to-list-stuff-for-sale, that's easier to use, safer, and open source for that matter.

People, why aren't we just getting together to do just this, we've got UX people, web people, team management types and coders out the wazoo here. Let's just make a new craiglist already.

PS: I forgot, we've got marketing genius's here to, that can make miracles happen with just about zero dollars.

PPS: It doesn't matter how much that saying irritates you, as a business owner, try being successful without customers. If anything the saying is truest only when a majority of the customers believe the same thing, but there is still truth in it. (Obviously a jerk customer that other customers would shun will have no impact on you if you say I won't serve you.) "The customers are always right" :)

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#112

Post by duked » Wed, Aug 01, 2012, 2:45 PM UTC

hnriot wrote: post #108

jeremymims wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craigslist could: - kill Padmapper instantly by building a map function to view their listings. - elect not to build a map feature because they think it's trivial and they believe no one cares. So Padmapper should languish. - buy Padmapper for a little bit of money and have Eric help make their product better. - hire Eric to make their product better. - invest a little money into Padmapper as a hedge and hope it does…

This seems very naive to think that Craig gives a damn about padmapper, they (CL) have every right to license their data to whomever they want, and PM choose not to seek such a license so I seriously doubt Eric would really stand much of a chance getting a job with CL. You speak as though CL is broken, and it clearly isn't, as a marketplace it functions well. You may not like the website, but it's marketplace first,…

I completely agree with you and got downvoted ;) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4322859

People seems to think that PM is the good guy and CL the bad guy I just see it a buiness trying to profit over one that's already existing and has a strong user base

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#113

Post by keiferski » Wed, Aug 01, 2012, 2:48 PM UTC

How could Craigslist possibly enforce this? Are they going to look for every single ad on every single classifieds website to ensure that it's not exactly the same?

Unless someone like PadMapper is scraping data, it seems impossible to enforce.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#114

Post by marquis » Wed, Aug 01, 2012, 2:52 PM UTC

Before this news, I was playing with the idea of a crowd-sourced scraper which would avoid Craigslist being able to ban particular IP addresses: for example a javascript scraper that the end-user runs for the few moments they are on a particular viewing site. Now that this has been passed even this idea would seem to fail.

I believe that Craigslist is an immense, rich resource where the inertia of it's community to move en-masse to another service means it highly unlikely that another site will take over in the near or near-far future. I am saddened that Craigslist can't simply provide (paid or whatever) API access to their data and encourage a healthy sub-ecosystem.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#115

Post by badclient » Wed, Aug 01, 2012, 2:54 PM UTC

hnriot wrote: post #108

jeremymims wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craigslist could: - kill Padmapper instantly by building a map function to view their listings. - elect not to build a map feature because they think it's trivial and they believe no one cares. So Padmapper should languish. - buy Padmapper for a little bit of money and have Eric help make their product better. - hire Eric to make their product better. - invest a little money into Padmapper as a hedge and hope it does…

This seems very naive to think that Craig gives a damn about padmapper, they (CL) have every right to license their data to whomever they want, and PM choose not to seek such a license so I seriously doubt Eric would really stand much of a chance getting a job with CL. You speak as though CL is broken, and it clearly isn't, as a marketplace it functions well. You may not like the website, but it's marketplace first,…

You speak as though CL is broken, and it clearly isn't, as a marketplace it functions well.

A marketplace can be popular and still broken. I think Craigslist's extreme insistence on not developing their product may have been a great move once upon a time but is catching up with them. PadMapper and apartment rentals is just one example.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#116

Post by prodigal_erik » Wed, Aug 01, 2012, 2:54 PM UTC

duked wrote: post #92

Honestly I have no stake in this, but I'm happy CL is doing that change. 3TAP and Padmapper and just trying to build a "buisness" sucking up posts from CL and tried to find doggy way around it. CL don't want their post used somehwere else, no fancy UI it's their right and it's now becoming their clear LEGAL right. I have zero sympathy for padmapper I actually think their buisness practices are disgusting (CL offered…

Craigslist offered a useless mobile-only license that wouldn't have permitted padmapper to remain on the web. And forbidding landlords from pasting their own ad into any other site is shockingly anticompetitive.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#117

Post by vijayr » Wed, Aug 01, 2012, 2:56 PM UTC

ralfn wrote: post #52

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #39

Wow. Under the disguise of a pseudo-charity, Craigslist just revealed it's true intentions. They foolishly just opened themselves up to a lot of hate and possibly gave people a huge reason to try out competitors. This may be the beginning of the end of Craigslist's Empire. This is usually how it starts, users being held hostage, increased control, and decreased satisfaction with the service with no way out due to net…

Thats a little dramatic. CL isnt popular here in Holland, but i was under the impression, it was ebay meets dating, using a 200 byte php forum file, that looked so old, you would just assume encodimg errors. Why are you getting your panties in a twist? What import role does this site play in your life or that of others?

I don't know about Holland, but CL is HUGE in the U.S, and I mean REALLY HUGE. I've sold stuff, rented apartments etc from CL, because that is where the crowd is. I know of people who use it for everything, and they are very happy. Takes a minute to post the ad, it is free, and even 70 year olds know it.

It is beyond me, why they refuse to improve the service. They could do it one small step at a time, carefully and slowly, so they don't upset their not so tech savvy audience (much of their audience falls in this category)

Things might change soon if they keep behaving this way, but at this moment, no-one comes close to CL (ebay may be, but you can't rent apartments from ebay)

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#118

Post by wildmXranat » Wed, Aug 01, 2012, 2:56 PM UTC

Dystopian wrote: post #89

floppydisk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're changing it to have legal grounds to fend off sites like Padmapper. If they have the exclusive license and another site copies the add and gussies up the display, they have legal grounds to go after the infringing site now. Prior to the explicit issuance of an exclusive license, lawyers for alternative services could make a compelling argument that Craigslist did not assert any license to the content and ther…

It should also mean though that cross-posting to other sites like Kijiji (very common) could result in having take-down notices sent for your ad (- since it's an exclusive license you're granting them). [IANAL]

No it isn't.

The information that is used to build the ad remains open to be used wherever and whenever the poster wants. I believe this storm is caused by third parties leeching off their ads and not users posting the ad in multiple places. Let's not get too dramatic about it.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#119

Post by stephengillie » Wed, Aug 01, 2012, 2:57 PM UTC

jeremyarussell wrote: post #111

hnriot wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems very naive to think that Craig gives a damn about padmapper, they (CL) have every right to license their data to whomever they want, and PM choose not to seek such a license so I seriously doubt Eric would really stand much of a chance getting a job with CL. You speak as though CL is broken, and it clearly isn't, as a marketplace it functions well. You may not like the website, but it's marketplace first,…

That's the thing though, remember that old adage "The customer is always right" it means that at the end of the day, right or wrong, good or bad, allowed or not-allowed, caring or cold, sue-happy or not if the people that use the website are complaining (and so far it seems they are) than cragislist is broken, because it's leadership lost the respect of it's market. There is absolutely nothing stopping someone from m…

The customer isn't always right, but they're still the customer. That saying really grinds my gears.

Someone said/typed once that there will be no big CL killer - that they'll be pecked to death by many small replacements, such as Etsy in the crafts space. PM should be the CL replacement for the housing market, and their biggest problem to solve now is getting listings from another source, hopefully from landlords listing directly with them.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#120

Post by tomc1985 » Wed, Aug 01, 2012, 2:57 PM UTC

Dear everybody, please stop trying to kill Craigslist. Just leave it alone. Craigslist is fine and good at what it does, and some of us don't want your fancy buzzword-friendly cloud app replacing it. Some of us just want listings.

I wish the padmapper dude would grow up (dude's on a quest like Don Quijote) and I wish people would stop salivating over the possibility of Craigslist's corpse. Find something else.

We'll see if this provision has any teeth when users repost their listings elsewhere. It seems added to make padmapper's life more difficult, and since the dude behind that site has been nothing but a whiny little biyotch, I'm all for it.