61–67 of 67 posts
If 3Taps wins, the gold rush is on to create CL interfaces using 3Taps' API. The major roadblock becomes images. Image URLs are provided in 3Taps' API but since no one can hotlink to CL, images are useless. How do you build a better CL interface if you can't use images?
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The irony is that if Craigslist would just take the time and effort to add a bit more functional / elegant interface, these third parties would have no reason to exist, and all the legal matters would disappear I understand that Craigslist wants to "Serve their community" and believes that changing their interface would interfere with that mission somehow (both, in terms of having to charge more in order to hire UI p…
It's just fear of screwing up a winning formula. Craigslist is making money hand over fist; they could hire some front end guys if they wanted to.
They really buy into the KISS principle over there, and it's worked well for them, but, the industry has moved forward, and it is possible to (affordably) add design and search flexibility without screwing up your uptime/responsive time.
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I am sure the orignal author does as well. This is more a question of "fair use", not robots.txt
Indeed - and i believe scraping data off a publically accessible webpage (e.g., one where you do not require registration and login/password) falls under fair use, provided you do not take up more bandwidth/resources than the average user of that site. I recall there being some precedent for this sort of fair use - something like a phone directory - the information is not copyrighted, but the arrangement and layout i…
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As a regular Craigslist user (buyer, seller and message board poster), my personal preference is to have material I post only accessible directly from CL. In other words, I do not want my classified ads, contact information contained therein, pictures, social banter, business ads and other information available to any external information service or website. This is my expectation not only of CL, but of many sites. I…
I would expect that many users would feel this way. I can guess why. But could you tell us specifically? Assume for the sake of the question that whereever the data may appear on the web, it would always have a "Source: " line to indicate its original source, i.e. the site to which you submitted it. Assume that the integrity of the data could also be verified, e.g., through a digital signature.
Of course, I realize that this must be tempered with the realization that there are situations where scraping CL and re-posting the information on another site may make sense for the original poster (e.g., a hotel ad).
Here are a few of the negative items that come to mind for just classified ads:
- When I complete a transaction and delete a CL ad, I do not want other interested parties calling, texting and e-mailing me hours, months or years afterwards
- I already dislike the 10-to-1-ish ratio of SPAM/scammer/nutjob banter to communications from legitimately interested parties. I suspect any proliferation of my postings beyond CL will only tend to increase this ratio.
- The text and images within my classified ads may be more easily accessible to scammers who just need some content to farm and post elsewhere (e.g., other classified forums, eBay, AirBnB, etc.)
- Sites which do the automated scraping of CL can directly be or can become a target and/or searchable repository for intelligence gathering and source for creating new or expanding existing personal identification databases
There are countless other scenarios ranging from good to bad regarding this subject. For now, I'm convinced that the potential for the bad, the incompetent, the annoying, the negligent, the criminal and other negative scenarios outweigh the good. This is really meant to apply to how I use CL. As I mentioned before, there are undoubtedly specific scenarios where many of the potentially negative items would be moot for specific CL users.
Obviously, there are other factors here too such as the commercial viability/legality/precedent of allowing non-CL entities to use CL resources with or without restriction to directly or indirectly profit. From my perspective as a user, it's not really that important other than an arguable matter of principle.
People with the pitchforks seem to be forgetting something.. 3Taps is not scraping Craigslist. Google is scraping Craigslist, and 3Taps is scraping Google. As far as common sense is concerned, Craigslist has no say concerning 3Taps data.
Does everything scraped by Google becomes public domain? If Google News scrapes an article from the NYT, can I then scrape the article from Google and republish it?
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3Taps doesn't access Craigstlist so the TOS has no effect.
You are 100% wrong. The ad copy on craigslist IS copyright protected so it doesn't matter where you scraped it from. TOSs do govern the data whether or not you are viewing a cached copy or not. By your logic all TOSs are rendered useless if you browse the net via proxy servers. You can scrape anything off the internet you like and do as you please...but you can't create a business out of it.
Google also overlays facts it finds by crawling the web in maps (Google Places and the One Box results) and uses the creative contribution of other people to provide things like reviews inline on SERP. Google is a bad target to sue though because they will punch you right back in the face.
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This argument is what the monopolist uses when they are faced with regulation. It isn't correct, because the user _isn't_ really going to be able to post on another forum. This is just like if telcos say 'go to some other provider if you don't like my terms and conditions'. except, they have a monopoly.
Just because CL has a large user base doesn't make it a monopoly. CL can go the way of MySpace if a better competitor comes along. There isn't any barrier to entry to create your own CL + Padmapper type listing site that requires some sort of monopoly break up. The hard part for you is creating a compelling enough competitor 15 years too late and also to make it worth people's while to start using your site vs. CL.
which is essentially why CL has a defacto "monopoly" - there is no way someone can come and make a different CL.
