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

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

#31

Post by [deleted] »

001sky wrote: post #10
fleitz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I like this idea.... Neural net for CL postings, extract the facts, reformat for your own display...

The key trick is the fact seperation. The information is in the public domain. So, you have to be a "reporter" rather than a "republisher" if that makes sense. The raw data may or may not be subject to certain considerations, the the only really valuable part -- the fact/information -- is more or less urestricted. The question is, will CL now take steps to make the data more "private" (eg, member only, even if free..…

[deleted]

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

#32

Post by welder »

001sky wrote: post #10
fleitz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I like this idea.... Neural net for CL postings, extract the facts, reformat for your own display...

The key trick is the fact seperation. The information is in the public domain. So, you have to be a "reporter" rather than a "republisher" if that makes sense. The raw data may or may not be subject to certain considerations, the the only really valuable part -- the fact/information -- is more or less urestricted. The question is, will CL now take steps to make the data more "private" (eg, member only, even if free..…

I made a-padmapper-like-service called CLMapper here:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/omonmigaleaafgpkgo...

http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/01/clmapper-is-a-padmapper-alt...

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

#33

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#34

Post by willrobinson »

If data is deliberately made available to the public, then it's public data. Even if's made available for free, that won't stop some on the web from trying to repackage it and derive commercial benefit from it. We've seen this many times. These folks have been very lucky that the validity of their assumptions has not been thoroughly tested in court. Somehow they become convinced they own the data. In reality they are merely the distributor.

Even if CL wins, e.g., they are granted an injunction to stop another site from scraping, scrapers can just get the same data from search engine caches. It's hard to argue trespass to chattels when the alleged trespasser never touches your servers. Moreover, search engines are themselves scrapers so clearly scraping is not per se a damaging activity in CL's view, only when it suits CL to view it that way. Arguing that robots.txt is a "license" is a stretch. It's designed to be read by a machine not a human.

And what if CL loses? What are the stakes then? Well, I'll let you answer that one. What exactly does 3taps have to lose?

CL claims they own the copyrights to facts and descriptions uploaded by CL users. Are users aware of this? Is it reasonable?

3taps' Answer should be a fun read.

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

#35

Post by benmccann »

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.

How is this different than Feist v. Rural in your mind? A fact is not copyrightable and is scrapable according to that case. I don't see how having copyrighted content next to non-copyrighted content affords any protection to the non-copyrighted content.

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

#36

Post by buro9 »

Does the USA not have a database right?

http://www.caret.cam.ac.uk/copyright/Page92.html

Effectively acknowledging that the contents of a database may have varying copyright (owner, public works, facts, etc), but that the database itself is given protection implicitly if the database is "original and the result of substantial investment".

This is why you find fake data in Google Maps, the Rare Record Price Guide http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0953260194 and so on. Because they are representations of databases and all the companies behind them have to do to have the protection is to prove that other representations of the data have been sourced from their database, which they do by pointing at the secret fake data that is part of the database.

Does that not exist? It offers protection to any entity that has compiled an original source of data at their expense.

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

#37

Post by einhverfr »

willrobinson wrote: post #23
einhverfr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, they are. Normally if someone wants an exclusive right to content they pay the producer for them. Virtually everyone else asks for a non-exclusive license. This is very different and has been discussed here on HN before.

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

#38

Post by einhverfr »

buro9 wrote: post #36

Does the USA not have a database right? http://www.caret.cam.ac.uk/copyright/Page92.html Effectively acknowledging that the contents of a database may have varying copyright (owner, public works, facts, etc), but that the database itself is given protection implicitly if the database is "original and the result of substantial investment". This is why you find fake data in Google Maps, the Rare Record Price Guide http…

The US does not recognize copyrights over databases. The issue though is that depending on the ads in question there may be creative elements.

For example, suppose I place an ad to rent my house out and include just info. Not likely protected but if I do it in iambic pentameter, probably is protected.

What this wouldn't prevent is someone scraping CL for facts (appartments for rent, x bed, y bath, z sq ft), extracting those facts, and arranging them in another order. That doesn't strike me as protectable in the US, even if it involves scraping directly from CL.

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

#39

Post by einhverfr »

I think we should create an app called clscraper which does as follows:

Given a set of resources, crawls across the site, extracting specific information from listings (price, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, square ft etc, contact info). Puts them in a very simple database. This should be 100% trouble-free copyright-wise at least in the US. The larger issue becomes what happens under other laws. However building a generic tool to extract (non-copyright-worthy!) facts from ads should by itself be more or less trouble-free.

Make this generic enough to work on most ad sites out there. Push the boundary back.

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

#40

Post by tptacek »

benmccann wrote: post #35
tptacek wrote: 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.

How is this different than Feist v. Rural in your mind? A fact is not copyrightable and is scrapable according to that case. I don't see how having copyrighted content next to non-copyrighted content affords any protection to the non-copyrighted content.

First, Feist says nothing about content being "scrapable". It's a 1991 case. To pull content off Craigslist against their will, you have to cross the CFAA.

Second, phone numbers are raw facts, but advertisements are not; every advertisement ever has been copyrighted, and a whole 11-figure industry depends on that.

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