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3Taps Files Countersuit, Says Craigslist Is Anticompetitive

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Re: 3Taps Files Countersuit, Says Craigslist Is Anticompetitive

#31

Post by simplesimpl3 »

mikeryan wrote: post #26
simplesimpl3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is 3Taps different from Google simply because they show a map? Maybe CL should have terms for their general website that say data can be scraped and cached but that it must appear in the cache either exactly as it does on CL, or with some things missing, but not with anything added (e.g. a map).

3taps isn't a client application for Craigslist, they essentially turn CL's data into a feed and then sell it to folks who then create services on top of that data. Padmapper is a client of 3taps who's been the client app that most of this is focused on. BTW 3taps doesn't scrape CL, they actually pull CL's data from Google's Cache so they can't be accused of violating CL's TOS.

Yeah, it would be futile for CL to go after Padmapper, so they are going after 3Taps. Why would they be more worried about 3Taps? Because anyone can do what 3Taps is doing. Anyone can pull CL data from a search engine cache like 3Taps does. There's no need to go to CL.

But one thing we know, if you look at the precedent, is that you can't sue Google and win. You either let them copy your site or opt out and lose the traffic. So what can you do?

Sue Google users! As far as I'm concerned, that's all 3Taps is. They are just aggregating what they pull from the cache.

Re: 3Taps Files Countersuit, Says Craigslist Is Anticompetitive

#32

Post by jonknee »

Karunamon wrote: post #25
tiddchristopher wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at all like that. The interesting thing seems to be the claim that Craigslist posts lack creativity, which Amazon reviews certainly do have. 3Taps is claiming the posts can't be protected by copyright, because you can't copyright facts. I think their case has merit.

My understanding was that, as the owner of a site, (even one that hosts mostly/completely content created by someone else), you get to dictate the terms on which any party accesses that site. It would be like if YouTube said that you may not access their site with anything but a web browser. Strange that they went the copyright way, though. IANAL, but isn't accessing a service you've been explicitly forbidden to (via…

3Taps doesn't access Craigstlist so the TOS has no effect.

Re: 3Taps Files Countersuit, Says Craigslist Is Anticompetitive

#33

Post by tiddchristopher »

bathat wrote: post #30
tiddchristopher wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right about that, and I think that's going to make their claim a bit unsteady. But I see an argument they might make: 1. Classified ads are facts, with negligible creativity put into their composition. 2. Facts are not copyrightable. 3. Therefore, 3Taps can scrape the ads. 4. If any ad actually does have creativity / an applicable copyright, the copyright holder can contact 3taps with a complaint. Basically a…

Feist v. Rural ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural ) seems to indicate the the arrangement of the facts is copyrightable, (if there is even a minimal degree of creativity) even though the facts themselves are not. The court held the alphabetic arrangement of names is not sufficient to warrant copyright protection, and it seems logical that mere temporal arrangement of classifieds would not merit protection…

Excellent points, especially regarding photographs. I was thinking of that case already, and hadn't considered the arrangement of facts within a post; what came to mind first was the collection of posts as their own arrangement of facts.

Re: 3Taps Files Countersuit, Says Craigslist Is Anticompetitive

#34

Post by ceejayoz »

awolf wrote: post #5

I hope that 3Taps follows through. This countersuit may help set a clearer precedent for who owns the data posted on public forums and what third party developers should be allowed to do with it. Earlier this year I was searching for an apartment in San Francisco. Craigslist was my only source for places to apply. The good apartments got snatched up pretty fast so I wanted a way to make sure I saw every listing that…

> it's called Craigslist Commando

Issues over content ownership aside, calling it that is a pretty clear trademark violation.

Re: 3Taps Files Countersuit, Says Craigslist Is Anticompetitive

#35

Post by naner »

awolf wrote: post #5

I hope that 3Taps follows through. This countersuit may help set a clearer precedent for who owns the data posted on public forums and what third party developers should be allowed to do with it. Earlier this year I was searching for an apartment in San Francisco. Craigslist was my only source for places to apply. The good apartments got snatched up pretty fast so I wanted a way to make sure I saw every listing that…

You are not entitled to scrape content from other sites, even if they contain publicly submitted data. I do support this sort of thing in the hacker spirit (as long as you aren't being too agressive) but selling an application using these techniques is downright unethical.

You have zero control over what you are selling to people. They don't know that you aren't using an offical means to get the data and the application could stop working at any time. And if you were scraping via the client (as opposed to collating data on a server of your own) you also put your customers in a position where they might be violating the site's TOS and risk reprecussions (ip ban, etc).

Re: 3Taps Files Countersuit, Says Craigslist Is Anticompetitive

#36

Post by uptown »

awolf wrote: post #12
res0nat0r wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a) People go to craigslist and create content about some aspect of their lives. They, as the original authors of the content, post it to craiglist with the intention that the general public can see it. Craigslist users only agreed to have their content displayed on the Craigslist site, not on any other random site on the Internet who wants to relist their posting without the users explicit permission.

I see what you're saying and that may technically be true. I'm not really arguing the legality of the issue though. I'm just talking about the spirit of what the content authors were trying to accomplish which I believe is: have some random person on the internet see their post and, subsequently, arrive at some sort of mutually beneficial arrangement with that person.

There's any number of places on the net where someone could post content and "have some random person on the internet see their post" ... but they continue to choose Craigslist because it's got the audience. If they want more-broad usage rights for what they want to post, they're free to chose an alternative platform on which to post.

Re: 3Taps Files Countersuit, Says Craigslist Is Anticompetitive

#37

Post by jcampbell1 »

naner wrote: post #35
awolf wrote: post #5

I hope that 3Taps follows through. This countersuit may help set a clearer precedent for who owns the data posted on public forums and what third party developers should be allowed to do with it. Earlier this year I was searching for an apartment in San Francisco. Craigslist was my only source for places to apply. The good apartments got snatched up pretty fast so I wanted a way to make sure I saw every listing that…

You are not entitled to scrape content from other sites, even if they contain publicly submitted data. I do support this sort of thing in the hacker spirit (as long as you aren't being too agressive) but selling an application using these techniques is downright unethical. You have zero control over what you are selling to people. They don't know that you aren't using an offical means to get the data and the applicat…

> You are not entitled to scrape content from other sites, even if they contain publicly submitted data.

Isn't this Google's business model? They take snapshots of the public web and show organized and relevant snippets. Last time I checked, they never asked me for permission.

Re: 3Taps Files Countersuit, Says Craigslist Is Anticompetitive

#38

Post by intended »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #37
naner wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not entitled to scrape content from other sites, even if they contain publicly submitted data. I do support this sort of thing in the hacker spirit (as long as you aren't being too agressive) but selling an application using these techniques is downright unethical. You have zero control over what you are selling to people. They don't know that you aren't using an offical means to get the data and the applicat…

> You are not entitled to scrape content from other sites, even if they contain publicly submitted data. Isn't this Google's business model? They take snapshots of the public web and show organized and relevant snippets. Last time I checked, they never asked me for permission.

And they can be asked to remove listings from their search. Ask rupert Murdoch

Re: 3Taps Files Countersuit, Says Craigslist Is Anticompetitive

#39

Post by onetwothreefour »

awolf wrote: post #5

I hope that 3Taps follows through. This countersuit may help set a clearer precedent for who owns the data posted on public forums and what third party developers should be allowed to do with it. Earlier this year I was searching for an apartment in San Francisco. Craigslist was my only source for places to apply. The good apartments got snatched up pretty fast so I wanted a way to make sure I saw every listing that…

I'm as much about free access to data as anyone, but holy shit do you have a warped view of the world.

Craigslist doesn't have to pay money to run their company and users don't have to use Craigslist.

But because Craigslist does and the users do, doesn't give anyone the right to scrape this data. The individual user owns their content, but Craigslist owns and runs the servers and access to this data for third parties is not a right -- it's a biz dev deal or partnership.

If the world worked how you want it to, no one would run any services because the load generated from scrapers would outweigh real user usage by a factor of 100x. And your competitors and parasitic freeloaders would just DoS you into monetary ruin.

You're not entitled to anything, and Craigslist doesn't owe you a business model.

TL:DR: This lawsuit is going straight into the trash.

Re: 3Taps Files Countersuit, Says Craigslist Is Anticompetitive

#40

Post by nhebb »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #37
naner wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not entitled to scrape content from other sites, even if they contain publicly submitted data. I do support this sort of thing in the hacker spirit (as long as you aren't being too agressive) but selling an application using these techniques is downright unethical. You have zero control over what you are selling to people. They don't know that you aren't using an offical means to get the data and the applicat…

> You are not entitled to scrape content from other sites, even if they contain publicly submitted data. Isn't this Google's business model? They take snapshots of the public web and show organized and relevant snippets. Last time I checked, they never asked me for permission.

They don't ask your permission, but they do respect robots.txt files as well as noindex, nofollow.
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