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The Craigwatch Story

craigwatch.com

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Re: The Craigwatch Story

#31

Post by [deleted] »

mkaziz wrote: post #29
yonran wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By my reading, prior to Dec 2013, the old terms[1] permitted using personal RSS readers but forbade aggregators. However, the new terms are much more restrictive; they prohibit any use of the craigslist website outside of a web browser. Thus, I think that it is now against the terms to use an RSS reader to read the craigslist RSS feeds! (By the way, it is also against the craigslist terms to write a crawler such as g…

I'm curious as to whether you got a response to your refusal to "comply." Did he get back to you after that?

[deleted]

Re: The Craigwatch Story

#32

Post by yonran »

mkaziz wrote: post #29
yonran wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By my reading, prior to Dec 2013, the old terms[1] permitted using personal RSS readers but forbade aggregators. However, the new terms are much more restrictive; they prohibit any use of the craigslist website outside of a web browser. Thus, I think that it is now against the terms to use an RSS reader to read the craigslist RSS feeds! (By the way, it is also against the craigslist terms to write a crawler such as g…

I'm curious as to whether you got a response to your refusal to "comply." Did he get back to you after that?

Not yet.

Re: The Craigwatch Story

#33

Post by SilasX »

8ig8 wrote: post #8

A while back, I hacked together notifications using RSS, but lately, I just use IFTTT... https://ifttt.com/craigslist

Do they get CL's permission to run that? Because it looks like it violates the ToS as written.

Re: The Craigwatch Story

#34

Post by pyoung »

dpweb wrote: post #5

I would think CL using a proxy that silently blocks client ips that interact with the service suspiciously may be cheaper than sending out lawyer letters and more immediately effective. Just prefer technical solutions to legal threatening I guess..

For fun and as a learning experience, I built a simple CL scrapping web site. I set it up on a small aws instance about 6 months ago and after playing around with and making modifications/updates to it over the course of a month or two, I largely forgot about it. After seeing this thread, it dawned on me that I had not received an e-mail update on any of my search alerts for a while. I ssh'ed into the server and got a 403 with 'wget craigslist.com', so my guess is that they are doing some sort of blocking. Looking at the logs, the block probably started about a month ago.

Re: The Craigwatch Story

#35

Post by houston-mouse »

One thing I like about this reflection is the highlighting of the weirdness of the connection between a service's creators and its users. I'm on both sides of the fence, and I find myself wrestling with lots of different feelings towards my users (mostly positive, but not all). I guess this dynamic has existed since the printing press, but it feels a bit more intimate now since you can see the emails and read the tweets.

Re: The Craigwatch Story

#36

Post by smoyer »

yonran wrote: post #27
stickfigure wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can Craigslist accuse you of violating their terms of use? The act of providing a chrome extension does not use their service. Maybe if this was some sort of copyright-circumvention software covered by the DMCA I could understand it. But this sounds like an obvious legal bluff, no? IANAL, which is why I am asking these questions.

IANAL either, but I think it would be against craigslist terms for me to continue to use their website while “providing” my accessibility extension. So I could publish the extension, but I would have to stop using craigslist. Additionally, the Chrome Web Store developer agreement[1] prohibits publishing an extension that “knowingly violates a third party’s terms of service”, so my guess is that the lawyer would then…

Except that your extension is running in Chrome which is a "general purpose Internet browser" and expressly allowed in CraigsList's TOS.

Re: The Craigwatch Story

#38

Post by shakethemonkey »

jstanek wrote: post #17
stickfigure wrote: post #6

I used Craigwatch. It was a useful tool - when a search pops, I get an email. I used to use Google Reader for this but when Reader died so did my RSS reading habit, so now email is the only part of my daily workflow that I poll frequently. The real mystery to me is why Craigslist shut the service down, because (protocols aside) it wasn't fundamentally different from any other way of consuming craigslist. Craigslist's…

Craigslist has a really bad history of abusing its users. For instance, a few years back they changed the TOS so that CL becomes the copyright holder of all ads placed on the site.

You can safely disregard that part of the TOS. Because law:

(a) A transfer of copyright ownership, other than by operation of law, is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such owner's duly authorized agent.[1]

[1] http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html

Re: The Craigwatch Story

#39

Post by Wingman4l7 »

pyoung wrote: post #34
dpweb wrote: post #5

I would think CL using a proxy that silently blocks client ips that interact with the service suspiciously may be cheaper than sending out lawyer letters and more immediately effective. Just prefer technical solutions to legal threatening I guess..

For fun and as a learning experience, I built a simple CL scrapping web site. I set it up on a small aws instance about 6 months ago and after playing around with and making modifications/updates to it over the course of a month or two, I largely forgot about it. After seeing this thread, it dawned on me that I had not received an e-mail update on any of my search alerts for a while. I ssh'ed into the server and got…

Modifying the user agent to mimic a normal browser might solve the problem.

Re: The Craigwatch Story

#40

Post by melvinng »

unreal37 wrote: post #30
melvinng wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is too law abiding.. But really what laws is he breaking here?? Trademark? Copyright? Spoke to my legal counsel and I don't see either..

Terms of service are a contractual agreement between a service and its users. There's no laws being broken, but it's breach of contract. Your legal counsel would know that I suspect.

Sorry, I forgot that people still live in the US.
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