241–250 of 312 posts
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I would say this pretty much killed Carsabi.
Actually not. Enough of their content is direct from dealers that it looks like they will be able to bounce back.
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They also don't have an API, and they also don't allow you to pay for a license or API for websites.
Do you have anything you're unwilling to sell? And if so is it cool if I just take it?
I'm surprised how many people here are defending Craigslist. They've got a history of both providing a terrible experience for apartment seekers and shutting down any attempts to use their data to provide a better experience. That would be okay in a competitive market, but they've got a strong monopoly in a market with a high barrier to entry. They're playing the textbook role of an evil monopolist.
Craigslist is not in the business of helping anyone but Craigslist be successful. It's not monopoly; it's business.
This is just offensive. It would be one thing if Craigslist was doing their best to satisfy their customers and they wanted to shut down others who were scraping their site and leeching off their business. However, Craigslist puts absolutely no effort into making their product usable. The continued existence of Craigslist is just a testimony to the enormous strength of network effect lock in.
Disagree. Craig Newmark has said that he's scared to make drastic changes to the UX specifically because he doesn't know what magic recipe keeps people coming back. Do I like the CL layout? Nope. Does that mean other people should steal the content and profit from it? Probably not.
It's just pure laziness and I'm sure the right talented team could make a product that beats Craig's list
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My apologies. I may have used some improper wording there. But if I may... you must admit that you have taken "something" from Craigslist. Whatever you want to call it... be it geographical location points, links-to-listings, content, data, images, etc... it is inevitably some form of information that was originally curated by Craigslist through their 10+ years of existence online and is thus available to be used (an…
Thanks for the explanation! I've talked with lawyers about this in the past week, and facts, totally rewritten summaries of fact, and collections of facts aren't copyrightable in the US, so it's not really an issue of their content, as far as I understand. They do have a right not to be crawled by me, though, especially if it causes a burden on them. I wrote that crawler specifically to be very light on their servers…
But there is an another way - let us (all of us) get the Craigslist data for you. You could create a browser plugin that would save craigslist posts a user views, and then upload only those posts to a central database that feeds padmapper. With just 1,000 users you would get most but not all the data you currently are scraping.
This is the same approach used by Recap (https://www.recapthelaw.org/) as a response to the federal government's paywall to access public court filings.
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The magic recipe that keeps people coming back is that Craigslist has a large network. I would be willing to bet a large amount of money that adding a map to search results and letting me put an upper limit on the number of bedrooms I'm looking for would not make people less likely to use Craigslist.
To be fair to Craigslist, since everyone and their grandma uses it, I'd imagine a lot of users have underpowered computers, outdated browsers, and low bandwidth connections. I've seen padmapper slow wayyyy down on my i7 macbook with 8GB ram, I can't imagine what it'd be like on grandma's 5 year old budget PC.
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Does that mean other people should steal the content and profit from it? Craigslist is unwilling to let Padmapper buy a license to use their content. This isn't as black and white as "stealing content".
Content not available for licensing is a justification for infringement? That doesn't ring true at all for me - exclusive content is often much more valuable to a business than content that's licensed. I doubt anyone would think that goldman sachs coverage being distributed by morgan stanley would fit under some "no harm, no foul" ethos even if Morgan significantly improved on the layout of the pages.
This is just offensive. It would be one thing if Craigslist was doing their best to satisfy their customers and they wanted to shut down others who were scraping their site and leeching off their business. However, Craigslist puts absolutely no effort into making their product usable. The continued existence of Craigslist is just a testimony to the enormous strength of network effect lock in.
I hope this doesn't get down-voted for the confusing title (I know it's the title of the Blog post itself; but out of context it's a bit misleading). When I moved from Atlanta to Boston, PadMapper was invaluable in finding a place to live. Given that 1) we didn't know the area, and 2) most rentals in Boston and Cambridge are rented by individuals rather than part of larger complexes, it was great to be able to have t…
PadMapper is a great tool that deserves access to that data. Why do they deserve access?
I'm surprised how many people here are defending Craigslist. They've got a history of both providing a terrible experience for apartment seekers and shutting down any attempts to use their data to provide a better experience. That would be okay in a competitive market, but they've got a strong monopoly in a market with a high barrier to entry. They're playing the textbook role of an evil monopolist.
Craigslist is a company whose terms of service were violated by PadMapper. Whether or not PadMapper provides a better experience is irrelevant: Craigslist has a right to defend its content and lists by whatever means it sees fit. Any businessperson on this site would expect to have the same rights. Craigslist is not in the business of helping anyone but Craigslist be successful. It's not monopoly; it's business.