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3taps vs. Craigslist -- Who owns public data?

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Re: 3taps vs. Craigslist -- Who owns public data?

#11

Post by willrobinson »

fleitz wrote: post #6
willrobinson wrote: post #5

The more Sherman Act claims that are brought against web incumbents, the sooner one is going to stick. The CL blog stinks of entitlement. Craigslist "stole" the classifieds business from local newspapers. Now they are accusing others of trying to "steal" the "CL idea" from them. I am one of (probably) the few who actually prefer a CL type interface. But the way CL is behaving in the face of competition is just embara…

Craigslist has never sued anyone for reimplementing their 'idea'. Craigslist didn't 'steal' the classifieds business, I recall no point in time which I could find the classifieds in my news paper copied verbatim onto craigslist. Craigslist offered a solution which was superior to newspapers and built a business around it. As to who holds copyright on the data that's a question for the courts that is currently undecid…

"stole" and "steal" and "CL idea" are all in quotes for a reason. Here, quotes are intended to signify the words quoted do not necessarily carry their dictionary meanings. They carry whatever meaning you assign to them. And that is what you have done. To you, "steal" means verbatim copying. But I might have assigned a different meaning, or maybe the same one. It's a figure of speech.

As for summary judgment, I think you mean _granting_ of summary judgment, not _filing_. But I'm not going to split hairs on the words you used. I know what you meant, even if it wasn't technically correct.

Re: 3taps vs. Craigslist -- Who owns public data?

#12

Post by anigbrowl »

Cushman wrote: post #4
tptacek wrote: post #2

It's not "public data". Illustrating example: people can and do make different offers on Craigslist than they do in other channels.

That doesn't mean there is copyright protection for doing so.

I think Tom is right. There's a famous case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural) where a telephone company sued someone for copying subscribers' telephone #s in a competing directory, and the Supreme Court ruled taht you can't copyright facts - essentially the same claim that 3taps is making on the copyright side. But Rural telephone co. had a statutory monopoly and the compilation and publication of the directory for subscribers' benefit was a condition of that monopoly.

Now CL has a de facto monopoly, but it's like many others in that the market has granted that status to a large extent. CL can afford to look frumpy because it has few competitors and a massive first-mover advantage. You could set up 'Cushman's list' tomorrow and you'd probably crash and burn without them lifting a finger to obstruct you. So CL's listings are more than mere facts, they're the expression of a commercial preference by advertisers. A better comparison owuld be with stock exchange data; (as far as I know) the copyright on that is watertight because it's partly an expression of member companies' desire to be listed on that exchange as opposed to one of the competing exchanges.

The above is just my hunch about the copyright claim, but I don't think 3taps can succeed with that argument. The antitrust claim, I have no idea - but it should be borne in mind that monopolies are not necessarily bad. Courts nowadays give great weight to consumer benefit rather than abstract rules, and CL delivers an awful lot of consumer benefit by being free for most and charging very modest fees to a small class of advertisers.

Re: 3taps vs. Craigslist -- Who owns public data?

#13

Post by tptacek »

pjlegato wrote: post #8
tptacek wrote: post #2

It's not "public data". Illustrating example: people can and do make different offers on Craigslist than they do in other channels.

Thing is, factual data itself, such as "Someone is offering to the public to sell X for $Y," is not subject to copyright. Copyright-eligible works must include some element of creativity, however small. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural ) So the text of a classified ad itself is indeed copyrightable, but the mere fact that a house at 123 Some Avenue is for rent for $1,000 per month is not. Having learned…

That might be true, but it doesn't follow that you can lawfully scrape facts out of copyrighted content on someone else's website.

Re: 3taps vs. Craigslist -- Who owns public data?

#14

Post by anigbrowl »

willrobinson wrote: post #5

The more Sherman Act claims that are brought against web incumbents, the sooner one is going to stick. The CL blog stinks of entitlement. Craigslist "stole" the classifieds business from local newspapers. Now they are accusing others of trying to "steal" the "CL idea" from them. I am one of (probably) the few who actually prefer a CL type interface. But the way CL is behaving in the face of competition is just embara…

You'd need to show that CL copied ads from newspapers in order to attract traffic, and I don't believe that's the case. taking away market share and scraping someone's website for content are vastly different things.

Re: 3taps vs. Craigslist -- Who owns public data?

#15

Post by aklofas »

tptacek wrote: post #13
pjlegato wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, factual data itself, such as "Someone is offering to the public to sell X for $Y," is not subject to copyright. Copyright-eligible works must include some element of creativity, however small. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural ) So the text of a classified ad itself is indeed copyrightable, but the mere fact that a house at 123 Some Avenue is for rent for $1,000 per month is not. Having learned…

That might be true, but it doesn't follow that you can lawfully scrape facts out of copyrighted content on someone else's website.

I do believe that is exactly what search engines do. Are they breaking copyright?

Re: 3taps vs. Craigslist -- Who owns public data?

#16

Post by tptacek »

tptacek wrote: post #13
pjlegato wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, factual data itself, such as "Someone is offering to the public to sell X for $Y," is not subject to copyright. Copyright-eligible works must include some element of creativity, however small. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural ) So the text of a classified ad itself is indeed copyrightable, but the mere fact that a house at 123 Some Avenue is for rent for $1,000 per month is not. Having learned…

That might be true, but it doesn't follow that you can lawfully scrape facts out of copyrighted content on someone else's website.

'aklofas auto-killed question:

I do believe that is exactly what search engines do. Are they breaking copyright?

This is not a simple question. Huge court cases have been fought over this. In general, things that get Google off the hook in these cases:

* Publishers have the ability to opt out of Google

* Where Google creates copies of information from other sites, those copies are provided to uses noncommercially (ie, they don't make more money when you use their cache).

* Google uses DMCA Safe Harbor to avoid liability, which again turns in part on Google honoring opt-out requests from publishers.

* Google's use of the data is transformative, an idea that in part turns on it not being a direct substitute for the original.

These are not generally arguments that bode well for PadMapper, which is effectively trying to compete with Craigslist using Craigslist data and a better interface. Publishers generally want Google to do things differently... but when push comes to shove, they also really want to be in Google's index. The same is not true for PadMapper.

Re: 3taps vs. Craigslist -- Who owns public data?

#17

Post by willrobinson »

anigbrowl wrote: post #14
willrobinson wrote: post #5

The more Sherman Act claims that are brought against web incumbents, the sooner one is going to stick. The CL blog stinks of entitlement. Craigslist "stole" the classifieds business from local newspapers. Now they are accusing others of trying to "steal" the "CL idea" from them. I am one of (probably) the few who actually prefer a CL type interface. But the way CL is behaving in the face of competition is just embara…

You'd need to show that CL copied ads from newspapers in order to attract traffic, and I don't believe that's the case. taking away market share and scraping someone's website for content are vastly different things.

"stole" market share. You got it. "[S]tole" was just a figure of speech. And that is in fact what meant by stole.

re: scraping. This is something that has come before the courts a few times (I'm thinking Ebay and a few others; although it might have been called "crawling"). Do you think CL can win on a claim of "scraping"?

Re: 3taps vs. Craigslist -- Who owns public data?

#18

Post by tptacek »

willrobinson wrote: post #17
anigbrowl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd need to show that CL copied ads from newspapers in order to attract traffic, and I don't believe that's the case. taking away market share and scraping someone's website for content are vastly different things.

"stole" market share. You got it. "[S]tole" was just a figure of speech. And that is in fact what meant by stole. re: scraping. This is something that has come before the courts a few times (I'm thinking Ebay and a few others; although it might have been called "crawling"). Do you think CL can win on a claim of "scraping"?

Yes, they probably can. Read those actual cases. In particular, in the cases where the scraper/crawler won, read why they won.

Re: 3taps vs. Craigslist -- Who owns public data?

#19

Post by willrobinson »

tptacek wrote: post #18
willrobinson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"stole" market share. You got it. "[S]tole" was just a figure of speech. And that is in fact what meant by stole. re: scraping. This is something that has come before the courts a few times (I'm thinking Ebay and a few others; although it might have been called "crawling"). Do you think CL can win on a claim of "scraping"?

Yes, they probably can. Read those actual cases. In particular, in the cases where the scraper/crawler won, read why they won.

Have you read the CL complaint?

Re: 3taps vs. Craigslist -- Who owns public data?

#20

Post by einhverfr »

Those who doubted that an exclusive license was truly exclusive should take note.

Craigslist here is arguing that they own essentially full copyright on all listings. This means if you advertise on Craigslist and you submit the same listing somewhere else you are guilty of breach of contract, and the other party may be guilty of copyright violation. How long before users start getting sued by one party to such litigation?

This is big trouble. We need to highlight that you give away all rights to all issue listings including the same material elsewhere.

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