You are a competitor. You are scraping material. Just make your app easier to use. I mean it's not rocket surgery. How could the New York Times let you scrape an article to put on your own site. Just give it a rest and take your lumps and move on.
An Open Letter to Craig Newmark
81–90 of 109 posts
Re: An Open Letter to Craig Newmark
#82I used to have a great deal of admiration for Craig, and craigslist... It's all but dissolved. After his/their repugnant treatment of Eric/padmapper and their more than glacial acceptance of the fact the CL UI sucked and was actually punitive to the UX - and yet another example of CL just being jerks, I am pretty much completely devoid of any respect for Craig/CL. It's too bad, especially given how Craig attempts to…
I've never bought into this "nice guy" image Craig Newmark seems to have cultivated for himself. Between numerous interviews where he gives flippant, condescending answers to reasonable questions and the overly litigious actions of the company that bears his name, I don't have a particularly high opinion of the man and I'm not surprised by this latest episode with Krrb.
In a sense he is a man who is limited in many areas but has been thrust into the limelight and given much power.
A cautionary tale to anyone placing special powers on someone who has achieved something great, that is that they have special powers everywhere and are generally right or have special insight about most things. They aren't. The best baseball player isn't any better at buying a car than a regular guy (and probably not anywhere as good as I am!)
Re: An Open Letter to Craig Newmark
#83Craigslist is the saddest example of a near natural monopoly formed in a two-sided market on the internet. Considering the pace of innovation over there, it's only a matter of time until they are disrupted. In the meantime we'll dread looking for apartments, buying/selling through classified ads, and anything else that we need to do on Craigslist.
I don't get your comment. How is Craigslist sad? Everyone seems to use them and I hear very few complaints.
And I personally find the website very easy to navigate.
Re: An Open Letter to Craig Newmark
#84The worst part is the hypocracy... what Buckmaster claims about himself: "Possibly the only CEO ever described as anti-establishment, a communist, and a socialistic anarchist" http://www.craigslist.org/about/jim_buckmaster
i've often noticed that many people claiming to be communist simply have an unhealthy love/hate relationship with money.
The quote loses all its context without the underlying hyperlinks.
He's turning around these press insults and using them as badges of honor.
It was Fortune Magazine that questioned whether he was a communist, because he wasn't focused on maximizing profits.
Re: An Open Letter to Craig Newmark
#85 Krrb just make a tool for user's convenience. Krrb didn't do any scraping of the content of craigslist. It is user's action/intent to scrape and repost. There is nothing wrong with Krrb just provides a tool for user's convenience
Re: An Open Letter to Craig Newmark
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Don't write code that will re-display/re-post content of a Craigslist post on your 3rd party website. The difference being it is it would be a Craigslist post I wrote and would contain photos I took. Those words came from my head, so are you saying Craigslist owns the copyright to them as soon as I submit the ad and thus I cannot post that content elsewhere? As the article said, Krrb is not scraping or even visiting…
> The data gets to Krrb on the volition of the user who posted to Craigslist. How does Krrb verify this? How does Krrb ensure that it's the post's author, and not some random bot hitting executing their javascript in an effort to scam users? > Craigslist owns the copyright to them as soon as I submit the ad and thus I cannot post that content elsewhere? You absolutely have that right. It's your data, you can re-post…
-> "Krrb does not have the right to scrape data from
Craigslist, on your say-so."
Wrong logic here my friend, it is the user to scrape and repost. Krrb just help user to make the process easier by making the tool
Re: An Open Letter to Craig Newmark
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
>but after that it's CL's If that were true then CL would be liable for their content. If a pimp posts a message and CL owns it, then CL is responsible for pimping. When state AG's have pressed this issue, CL claims they don't own the message. They can't have it both ways.
Um, yes they can. You are free to post the same content elsewhere -- you still have copyright in the material. What you don't have is rights to redistribute content from Craigslist. The publisher's rights (which you granted) are different from the author's rights, but they still exist. That doesn't make them liable for your content.
What's the difference between copying and pasting from a single text file to both CL and krrb and copying and pasting from a CL post that you wrote to krrb? They're functionally equivalent as you're the author and retain your authorly rights in either case.
The krrb tool extracts data from a file not on craigslist servers, but from the browser cache on your own computer. It's a browser plug-in, not a server-side tool. If CL is okay with you downloading a copy so that you can see the post that you just made (which they obviously are by virtue of how their service works) then in fact there is no additional bandwidth being consumed!
Re: An Open Letter to Craig Newmark
#88You are a competitor. You are scraping material. Just make your app easier to use. I mean it's not rocket surgery. How could the New York Times let you scrape an article to put on your own site. Just give it a rest and take your lumps and move on.
What if you owned the copyright to the New York Times article?
Re: An Open Letter to Craig Newmark
#89This is a pointless waste if time. The guy has made shed loads of money and his actions have clearly demonstrated he doesn't give a flying whatever about anyone's opinion of his actions and will continue to do whatever maximizes his profit. I say that without positive or negative judgment. It just is what it is. The whole - hey we know you're really a nice kid so stop bullying the other kids - schtick never worked in…
I've chatted with Craig before. He has helped us at greatnonprofits.org quite a bit in the past. Regardless of what business decisions the executives in charge of craigslist are making that does not somehow make Craig not a nice guy. In particular I respect his decision to not second guess or meddle with the judgement calls of the executives in charge of craiglist. I am sure if he has any disagreements with how they…
I've spoken with him too, very recently. It's my impression he's still actively answering support emails for CL (as in daily). No?
Re: An Open Letter to Craig Newmark
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Smart businessmen (who want to stay in business) don't blog about litigious information, no matter how cool or web 2.0 it is to do so now days. They let their lawyers handle it.
uh.... there is NOTHING web 2.0 about CL
From Wikipedia:
"Web 2.0 describes web sites that use technology beyond the static pages of earlier web sites...A Web 2.0 site may allow users to interact and collaborate with each other"
Craigslist, along with Flickr, Twitter, etc, are the quintessential Web 2.0 sites.