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

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

#21
post #3

3taps will file an antitrust countersuit, alleging that Craigslist maintains a [monopolistic control] over numerous markets related to online classified advertising. If successful, 3taps could open up the market to numerous innovations atop Craigslist data and bring about the user interface and search features, whose lacking seem to be exemplified by the popularity of sites such as PadMapper -- Anti trust is an inter…

It's a good angle. It raises abuse of copyright issues, and means Craigslist, if they lose, will have its use of copyright subject to greater scrutiny.

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

#22

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.

But when giving away an exclusive license, as CL requires, you aren't allowed to run the same content in both the newspaper and CL, right?

I have always wondered about running a similar listing somewhere else first, then running something lightly edited on Craigslist, sending their registered agent, by registered mail, a note that the exclusive license applies only to the relatively minor editorial changes applied.... I wonder how fast such would get delisted....

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

#23

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.

But when giving away an exclusive license, as CL requires, you aren't allowed to run the same content in both the newspaper and CL, right? I have always wondered about running a similar listing somewhere else first, then running something lightly edited on Craigslist, sending their registered agent, by registered mail, a note that the exclusive license applies only to the relatively minor editorial changes applied...…

Do you think most people listing ads on CL read the terms and understand them as you did? (Or were the terms confusing?) Are CL's terms different from what one would normally expect from a newspaper? That is, would you expect that the newspaper would require an exclusive license and prohibit you from running your ad anywhere else?

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

#24
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

The whitepages case is exactly the one EFF's attorney Kurt Opsahl referred to when I spoke to him about copyright law and facts.

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

#25
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

[deleted]

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

#26
post #7
post #3

3taps will file an antitrust countersuit, alleging that Craigslist maintains a [monopolistic control] over numerous markets related to online classified advertising. If successful, 3taps could open up the market to numerous innovations atop Craigslist data and bring about the user interface and search features, whose lacking seem to be exemplified by the popularity of sites such as PadMapper -- Anti trust is an inter…

Sigh, antitrust is a dead end. It might have been possible to argue prior restraint if Craigslist had stuck with their silly 'we own this' clause but they didn't. My guess is that any judge would say "Can anyone else make a classifieds site?" and "Does Craigslist interfere with anyone on their site using a different site?". Since the answer will be 'No' and 'No' thus they don't have a monopoly.

That seems overly simplistic. Anybody could have used a different browser/OS (there were several available in the 90s), yet MS was still found to be violating antitrust laws.

The real question is whether Craigslist is using its market dominance in a way that hurts consumers. It's a far more nuanced question and one that will be fascinating to watch get answered. Craigslist did some awesome things for consumers once upon a time. Now? I'm not so sure it's all positive.

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

#27
post #13
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.

The distinction 3taps makes is that it doesn't scrape content from Craigslist but from search results from google and bing.

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

#28
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If we're going to have a serious discussion, let's not put quotes around things and have different interpretations. Let's state exactly what we mean and talk about it.

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

#29
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh, antitrust is a dead end. It might have been possible to argue prior restraint if Craigslist had stuck with their silly 'we own this' clause but they didn't. My guess is that any judge would say "Can anyone else make a classifieds site?" and "Does Craigslist interfere with anyone on their site using a different site?". Since the answer will be 'No' and 'No' thus they don't have a monopoly.

That seems overly simplistic. Anybody could have used a different browser/OS (there were several available in the 90s), yet MS was still found to be violating antitrust laws. The real question is whether Craigslist is using its market dominance in a way that hurts consumers. It's a far more nuanced question and one that will be fascinating to watch get answered. Craigslist did some awesome things for consumers once u…

Your counter-example (ms windows+expolorer) is not-quite on point, though. Consider: windows had a legitimate monopoly, and then they "abused" it. But, because you are presuming the existence of a monopoly for CL this does not work. CL is an online classified ads business. The barriers to entry are de-minimus (unlike, OS software + hw compatibility, ect). So the premise of monopoly can be attacked fairly and directly.

CL arguably is not abusing a monoploy because they don't even have one. They just have a cheap service, and nobody wants to pay to do it different. The consideration you raise -- are they anti consumer -- is an interesting one to think through. It does seem they over-reached (re: the exclusivity of data). But without any contractual exclusivity or confidentiality its not clear that CL can "monopolize" publicly published data, given that the most valuable bits are (at least for rentals) nothing but street adresses, apartment #s, and possibly Telco #s. These data are not legal-sense "intellectual property" under most concepts (patent, copyright, or trade secret).

It would be an interesting argument to see the threshold case: when/where do 3 facts become a creative work? Its not a trivial argument, though, because at some stage N words becomes a lyric a poem or an idea. You cant copyright a word, though. Its highly unlikely you can copyright an adress. They might try to argue its like a "recipe" or some such (list of common ingredients?). Who knows. But somewhere in there, I'm guessing we'll find out.

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

#30
post #27
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The distinction 3taps makes is that it doesn't scrape content from Craigslist but from search results from google and bing.

about a week or two after Craigslist filed the lawsuit against 3taps, they put a "noarchive" tag on their listings pages. Since then, their content isnt available in search engine caches.
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