Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

baligu.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 209 posts

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#191

Post by jetti »

alttab wrote: post #184
jetti wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Generally, the guy is sitting on top of a monopoly and is actively choosing to do nothing with it other than collect money, and prevent anyone from usurping his throne." There is nothing stopping somebody from coming up with a site that beats craigslist, nothing at all. It will be hard, for sure, but it can and will be done eventually. So it isn't really preventing anybody from usurping his throne. "But when you add…

I didn't mean to say they are stifing innovation because they won't let some UI hipsters gain access to their data - but because they aren't willing to cooperate at all, AND don't do anything to make internet classifieds anything other than what it already is... from 12 years ago.

Those aren't reasons that they are stifling innovation. They are just not providing an easy in for other companies, which most companies don't do either. If Craigslist didn't exist the field would be exactly the same, the new companies would face a chicken and the egg problem. How do they get users without content and how to get content without users.

I feel that the people are being extraordinarily harsh on Craigslist with requests that would be laughed at if you brought them to another company. Although that being said, CL is in a unique position where they have been able to hold their market share without innovation or even much change.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#192

Post by res0nat0r »

jessriedel wrote: post #95
briandear wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not anti-competitive any more than a book publisher not allowing you to serialize your novel in some other company's publication. No one is forcing anyone to use Craigslist. You are free not to post and free to not agree to those terms. Why should a publisher (which is what CL is) grant non exclusive rights? It's a business. If you don't like the terms, you aren't forced to sign the contract. You can always post…

You didn't address the monopoly argument at all. There is behavior that is fine under proper market conditions, but is considered under anti-trust laws to be anti-competitive when one has a monopoly (or near monopoly).

Large user base != monopoly.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#193

Post by jessriedel »

res0nat0r wrote: post #192
jessriedel wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't address the monopoly argument at all. There is behavior that is fine under proper market conditions, but is considered under anti-trust laws to be anti-competitive when one has a monopoly (or near monopoly).

Large user base != monopoly.

80% market share = monopoly. It varies industry-to-industry, but governments have long recognized that you get many of the monopoly powers before you reach 100%. This is even more true when there are network effects.

Standard Oil only had 64% market share when it was broken up.

Edit (since I can't reply): We aren't expecting a FB breakup for the same reason we don't expect a CL breakup; the US Justice department has been taking a hands-off approach. Given their expertise and the possibility of doing damage, that might be the right approach, but that doesn't mean the monopolies don't exists and aren't doing damage. (Remember, I'm not arguing for a CL breakup, just for the fact that the monopoly exists and must be discussed.) Frankly, I would support a FB breakup, especially if it could lead to an open social-media protocol for federations.

There are plenty of CL competitors. It's just that nobody uses them.

I'll put it this way: do you really think CL has 80% market share because no one can build a better competitor? The site UI is crap.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#194

Post by wpietri »

achompas wrote: post #175
wpietri wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Either your first priority is delivering value to your users or it's not. Craigslist has changed from one to the other. Padmapper isn't the existential threat. It's CL's failure to keep improving.

Despite the reigning opinion on HN, adding this legalese to postings does not hinder CL's ability to serve its users.

I never said otherwise. But as the Padmapper thing shows, the point of the legalese is to hinder people who are serving its users.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#195

Post by res0nat0r »

jessriedel wrote: post #193
res0nat0r wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large user base != monopoly.

80% market share = monopoly. It varies industry-to-industry, but governments have long recognized that you get many of the monopoly powers before you reach 100%. This is even more true when there are network effects. Standard Oil only had 64% market share when it was broken up. Edit (since I can't reply): We aren't expecting a FB breakup for the same reason we don't expect a CL breakup; the US Justice department has…

Should we be expecting a Facebook breakup soon? Sure CL and FB have huge userbases, but how are you determining CL in fact is a monopoly and stifling competition? Or is there no competition because no one is successfully (and legally) trying to start their own CL competitor?

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#196

Post by mark-r »

kevinpet wrote: post #152
smspence wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...if she lists that couch on ebay as well she is technically in breach of craigslist's terms of service." No, I do not think that has anything to do with the new craiglist terms of service. The new terms of service just prevents other people from copying the content of the craigslist ad. So, no the hypothetical woman selling the couch would not be affected by the new terms in any way.

No, the new terms of service may be intended to prevent other people from copying content, but what matters is what's written in the contract, not what the press release says. What the terms of service actually do is grant Craigslist the same license an author grants a publisher -- you can't grant Random House exclusive rights, then turn around and self-publish electronically. You may be happy to rely on vague "oh, w…

I'm sure Craigslist is counting on nobody bothering to read the fine print. As long as they don't start enforcing the clause on individuals there won't be any outcry outside of tech circles, and nobody's going to notice the difference. If you refuse to sign away your rights on principle you'll just be locking yourself out of the market.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#197

Post by achompas »

wpietri wrote: post #194
achompas wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite the reigning opinion on HN, adding this legalese to postings does not hinder CL's ability to serve its users.

I never said otherwise. But as the Padmapper thing shows, the point of the legalese is to hinder people who are serving its users.

CL has every right to do that, especially since scraping CL listings creates a very high amount of load on their servers. Higher load --> slower response time --> deteriorated user experience.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#198

Post by defen »

alttab wrote: post #189
defen wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I don't think they would ever sue their own users. But the point is that you don't get to simply ignore parts of an agreement that you don't agree with, because "that's not what they meant". So the people who were saying that PadMapper has no right to use Craigslist's data should be careful not to submit to multiple listing services if they ever put a house up for rent on Craigslist, if they care at all about…

I don't conflate the two at all. Padmapper scraping data put up on CraigsList and adding it to their own listings is very very different than me putting my own listing on multiple sites. I don't see this as a "application of principles" issue. The principle I'm consistently applying is "I have the right to tell whomever I want about something I want to sell." And Craigslist is applying the consistent principle that t…

The new agreement says that by posting on Craigslist, you give them an exclusive license to the content. You can't give them an exclusive license and then turn around and give the content to someone else.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#199

Post by wpietri »

achompas wrote: post #197
wpietri wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said otherwise. But as the Padmapper thing shows, the point of the legalese is to hinder people who are serving its users.

CL has every right to do that, especially since scraping CL listings creates a very high amount of load on their servers. Higher load --> slower response time --> deteriorated user experience.

Did I say they don't have the legal right to do that? No, I didn't. I doubt anybody did.

There's no particular reason to think that spiders are a giant problem for them. Any high-volume site deals with crawlers all the time. If it were a problem because of some site architecture weirdness, it'd be easy enough to set up something that wouldn't be problematic. For example, the RSS feeds they already offer.

Worst case, they could charge people like Padmapper a fee to license the data. Which in fact they already do, but they insist on it being mobile only.

So Craigslist's behavior is purely a business choice, not driven by any technical necessity.

Re: Craigslist now asks for exclusive license when posting

#200

Post by rhizome »

nathan_long wrote: post #132
smspence wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...if she lists that couch on ebay as well she is technically in breach of craigslist's terms of service." No, I do not think that has anything to do with the new craiglist terms of service. The new terms of service just prevents other people from copying the content of the craigslist ad. So, no the hypothetical woman selling the couch would not be affected by the new terms in any way.

>> The new terms of service just prevents other people from copying the content of the craigslist ad. Um... >> the exclusive right to enforce copyrights against anyone copying, republishing, distributing or preparing derivative works without its consent Where does it say anything about "other people?" I mean, I doubt Craigslist would sue an actual user for posting on EBay, but they might send EBay a takedown notice f…

The "work" is the content as it appears on Craigslist. CL doesn't have exclusive right to the selling of the object, just the content of the ads people post to CL.
Post reply on HN