Craigslist Suing Padmapper

http://gigaom.com/2012/07/24/craigslist-sues-competitor-padmapper-over-listings/

by staunch • 14 years ago

317 449 14 years ago

astrodust8• 14 years ago

When you can't beat them, sue them into the ground.

Craigslist is one of the poorest user experiences around and succeeds only because people insist on using it. The alternatives somehow manage to be even more spectacularly useless by over-designing their apps and cluttering them up with junk.

Padmapper is one of the few that does what they're supposed to do, and it's not even an optimal implementation of this sort of thing.

flatline3• 14 years ago

When you can't beat them, steal their work product.

Padmapper is (indirectly) screen-scraping Craigslist's data in an attempt to unseat Craigslist.

diminoten3• 14 years ago

> in an attempt to unseat Craigslist.

Unseat Craigslist as the undisputed champion of what, exactly? Cartographical apartment hunting?

astrodust8• 14 years ago

If these were articles written by professional writers, you might have a case. Instead these are posts written by many different individuals trying to advertise their properties.

Craigslist didn't write a single one of those posts. They try and assert control over this content through their terms of service:

"You automatically grant and assign to CL, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant and assign to CL, a perpetual, irrevocable, unlimited, fully paid, fully sub-licensable (through multiple tiers), worldwide license to copy, perform, display, distribute, prepare derivative works from (including, without limitation, incorporating into other works) and otherwise use any content that you post. You also expressly grant and assign to CL all rights and causes of action to prohibit and enforce against any unauthorized copying, performance, display, distribution, use or exploitation of, or creation of derivative works from, any content that you post (including but not limited to any unauthorized downloading, extraction, harvesting, collection or aggregation of content that you post)."

The last part of that may not be enforceable. They're asserting that they are singularly responsible for "authorizing" reproduction despite not having copyright for the material in question.

iamwil3• 14 years ago

Not true. You wouldn't link back to Craigslist if you wanted to unseat them.

ori_b2• 14 years ago

> Craigslist is one of the poorest user experiences around and succeeds only because people insist on using it.

So, to paraphrase, it only succeeds because something about it attracts customers. As opposed to other sites, which succeed by fairy dust and rainbows.

If padmapper has a great user experience, that's wonderful -- They should be able to get customers to post their listings on it, and generate data without relying on Craigslist. Or, if they rely on Craigslist, and what the article said is true, they could have negociated a license to the data, instead of scraping it.

astrodust8• 14 years ago

It only succeeds because it has a historical legacy that's proving difficult to displace. This is the same thing driving eBay.

It's a difficult nut to crack. Kajiji seems to be gaining some traction, but it's trading one set of UX nightmares for another.

mikeash• 14 years ago

CL won because it got the first mover advantage, and now benefits greatly from network effects. It could be much improved over what it is, but it has little incentive to change now.

ericd• 14 years ago

Nah, they were pretty steadfast about offering only a mobile license and not being willing to talk about anything.

pat2man• 14 years ago

I am sure Craigslist has many more users than Padmapper. It would he hard to argue that Craigslist can't "beat" them.

jblock2• 14 years ago

"Craigslist is one of the poorest user experiences around and succeeds only because people insist on using it."

If a lot of people INSIST on using it, then that means it has good UX. Complaints with their UX should be qualified.

astrodust8• 14 years ago

People insist on using it not because it has a good user experience, but because of content. It has a terrible user experience. Don't confuse the two things.

For instance, many payroll companies have truly awful sites, yet people use them since they have no other choice.

As a specific example, searching for an apartment should not mean reading every single listing in order to discern where the property is, what features are available, and what conditions apply. That people post the same listing repeatedly until it is rented is not helping matters.

eBay, which is arguably still quite primitive, has much better filtering options, alerts, and a single listing that persists until the auction is completed. Craiglist is a series of random, repetitive posts with only a minimum of categorization.

Padmapper provided a superior way to navigate listing data and present it in a much more meaningful presentation. Being able to "favorite" listings helps when filtering.

rprasad13• 14 years ago

Craiglist has a great UX for a classifieds board: location > type of listing > listings by date.

It may look butt ugly, but it is as close to a functionally efficient classifieds board as you can get. Craigslist isn't trying to be anything more than that.

jacoblyles6• 14 years ago

>"Craigslist is one of the poorest user experiences around and succeeds only because people insist on using it"

Please use the proper legal word - "Monopoly". I wonder how the Department of Justice decides who to prosecute?

gfosco2• 14 years ago

Who didn't see this coming? I almost feel bad for Padmapper, but not really, because they should have known better.

citricsquid• 14 years ago

If anyone is the party we should feel bad for in this case it's 3Taps. They seemed to be flying under the radar until Padmapper started using them.

debacle10• 14 years ago

They're running a service called 'craiggers' that scrapes Craigslist listings and sells an API. It's clear trademark infringement. Why would we feel bad for them?

brador• 14 years ago

"Flying under the radar hoping we don't get caught and sued for something we know is wrong" should not be a part of any reasonable business plan.

dave1619• 14 years ago

Does anybody know if Craigslist is cracking down on all the Craigslist iPhone apps?

runako6• 14 years ago

I'm guessing they're not cracking down on the ones that opted to contractually license the CL data.

soperj• 14 years ago

they won't be if they've paid to use the craigslist mobile api.

zcvosdfdgj• 14 years ago

They have an api for mobile apps. If you haven't purchased it, doesn't that tell you all you need to know?

res0nat0r15• 14 years ago

Here's a nugget from the article which I didn't hear anything about in the previous Padmapper postings and chat here on HN:

"The company said it offered a license that would have allowed PadMapper to use its data on mobile applications but that the competitor did not accept the terms."

pavel_lishin• 14 years ago

How many people use PadMapper on a mobile device, vs. the desktop site?

pchristensen• 14 years ago

Their iPad app is one of my guilty pleasures. (ditto HotPads and Redfin)

huckleberries212• 14 years ago

It was in PadMapper's original blog post about the C&D letter

mikegirouard2• 14 years ago

That caught me as soon as I read it too. I didn't recall that part mentioned earlier.

From the original: > They allow mobile apps to display their listings if you buy a license from them, but not websites.

freehunter3• 14 years ago

I wonder what would happen if their mobile app was simply a browser shell pointing to a mobile-optimized website. That mobile-optimized website could be accessible from a desktop, though unadvertised.

modeless• 14 years ago

This kind of market segmentation through restrictive content licenses is something I'd expect from Hollywood, not Craigslist. It's extremely distasteful and they should feel bad. There's simply no good reason to allow mobile apps but prohibit web apps. Would Craigslist offer a license to a Firefox OS app? How about a Chrome OS app?

jonknee• 14 years ago

That is meaningless. The terms may well have been ridiculous (only covering mobile is a good start at ridiculous).

zem• 14 years ago

that is actually the point at which i lost sympathy for craigslist. they can license the data or not, but if they do they should not get to demand where and how it is used

picklefish• 14 years ago

Why is craigslist going after people who bring them traffic? Is it because they don't bring in much money themselves so they have to sell licenses? I've never really thought about craigslists business model. I assume it's almost entirely ad based / premium placement of your ad on their site based.

vailripper• 14 years ago

Job listings in select cities cost money, I believe that's their only source of income.

avolcano• 14 years ago

From a Wired article, circa 2009 (so this may be out of date):

"Craigslist is not only gigantic in scale and totally resistant to business cooperation, it is also mostly free. The only things that cost money to post on the site are job ads in some cities ($25 to $75), apartment listings by brokers in New York ($10), and—in a special case born of recent legal trouble—advertisements in categories commonly used by prostitutes, because authorities encourage vendors to maintain a record that would aid investigators. There is no banner advertising. They won't let you join them, and at this price you can't beat them either."

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_...

Usually, when companies get mad about scraping, it's because it's either bypassing the ads that make them money, or in rare cases bypassing a premium API. Here, PadMapper is doing neither.

In fact, if Craiglist is so committed to not updating their ugly website, why don't they just license out a public API, killing two birds (new monetization strategy and having a better interface for free) with one stone?

diminoten3• 14 years ago

I'm guessing that PadMapper said no to paying for API access, for some reason.

Though to be honest that makes no sense, because that's exactly what they're getting from the third party site, and they're paying for that...

dkroy• 14 years ago

Yeah, it doesn't seem like a smart business decision to me. It would just make sense to pursue this new revenue stream, and license out an API. This response just seems like more of an emotional response than a business strategy.

Edit: Not sure why this comment is getting down-voted, but if I offended some one that was not my intention.

gamble• 14 years ago

The first step to beating Craigslist at apartment listings is to get everyone to use a different front-end. (ie. Padmapper) Then you offer a way to create listings entirely within that front-end and bypass Craigslist entirely. CL becomes little more than a backend database, and eventually goes out of business as no one needs to use it anymore.

rprasad13• 14 years ago

Craiglist doesn't get traffic from PadMapper. PadMapper gets nearly all of its traffic from Craiglist. Craiglist can charge for mobile licenses because people want the traffic that Craiglist can bring them.

philfreo• 14 years ago

No, it's the other way around. I view real Craigslist pages but use Padmapper to get me there.

Goronmon5• 14 years ago

PadMapper gets no traffic from Craigslist. Craiglist gets traffic from PadMapper.

PadMapper is basically a pointer to a listing on Craigslist (when Craigslist listings are the reference), where you can search the pointers with filtering that you can't on Craigslist. In order to get to PadMapper, you have to visit the site directly.

hapless• 14 years ago

The same reason facebook bought instagram: craigslist doesn't want any other web site's userbase to become the kernel for a replacement listing service.

Once you have a web site that attracts buyers, you can replace craigslist data with your own listing service and stop paying for their API.

They clearly don't fear this kind of competition in the mobile space, hence offering licenses for mobile-only API use.

runako6• 14 years ago

A key part of building a business around stealing IP is getting acquired by a big firm that can fight legal battles. YouTube executed well on this plan; I'm curious how Padmapper planned for this obvious development.

cwp9• 14 years ago

Padmapper doesn't steal IP.

runako6• 14 years ago

s/stealing IP/behaving in a manner that may be or may not be stealing IP but probably looks enough like stealing IP to a judge to pass legal muster and require an expensive legal defense/g

The point is that simply defending against the lawsuit could kill Padmapper. Lots of time, money, and energy go into lawsuits. Conveniently, those are three things startups don't typically have in excess. The outcome doesn't matter for Padmapper if Padmapper dies during the defense.

chimi2• 14 years ago

It's pretty clear that Padmapper is making use of the craigslist posts without the rights to do so, which is defined by Merriam-Webster as "stealing".

  STEALING
  transitive verb
  1a : to take or appropriate without right or leave 
  and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stealing

If you're going to downvote me, that's fine, but if you do, please show how copyright infringement does not fit within the definition of stealing. I'd like to settle this semantic debate once and for all.

coliveira3• 14 years ago

Or alternatively, steal IP while nobody is looking and then launch an IPO that will pay for the lawyers: that is what Google itself did.

cwp9• 14 years ago

Well, I can't say this was a surprise, but it is disappointing. I hope Padmapper has the wherewithal to fight the suit. Bon courage, Eric.

Killswitch• 14 years ago

I'm very interested in the outcome of this as I am building a service similar to Padmapper in the sense that it uses data from other sources to make a better user experience for people, and I'd love to include Craigslist (Would be a big supplier of data for my users), but I don't want to deal with these types of things so I have been leaving it out.

jcurbo• 14 years ago

I think the key thing here is that you have to talk to your data sources. You have to use their data source the way they want you to, or come to some sort of agreement (licensing or somesuch), else you are moving into the same legal territory Padmapper was in and risk getting sued.

slig3• 14 years ago

Do as they did: build it and wait until the C&D. Get a massive amount of free PR and hopefully you can go from there.

moron2• 14 years ago

The suit is understandable, but I wish craigslist would get over themselves already and allow users to look at listings on a map. That's all anyone really wants here, and this is getting a bit ridiculous.

blhack• 14 years ago

Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4218714

Eric, everybody saw this coming.

patdennis• 14 years ago

My logical brain says that suing Padmapper is perfectly reasonable. My emotional brain is crying at the idea of using raw Craigslist ads to find an apartment the next time I move to a new city.

I move to a new city every year, usually on short notice, and I often go into the process of apartment hunting with no knowledge of local neighborhoods, the public transportation system, or general geography. Without Padmapper, the process would be unbearable.

Goronmon5• 14 years ago

Yeah, I'm in a similar position. Every time I have to use Craigslist I come much closer to hating the team behind it. I mean, I know it's probably not rational, but I think they are being shitty people for locking up so much useful data behind a site that is designed to be miserable to use. It's pretty evil when you get down to it. It's obvious they don't care about users.

vigrant2• 14 years ago

What's stopping someone from making a craiglist like website with an awesome UI?

guelo• 14 years ago

That's ridiculous. Craigslist lets you refine your search down to the neighborhood. It's not that hard to use. People find apartments on there all the time.

jcdavis• 14 years ago

It may not that hard to use, but Padmapper is still a far superior experience (eg email alerts on apartments in an area which meet your criteria)

jfb• 14 years ago

Depends on which Craigslist you use -- the neighborhood listings aren't particularly granular, and neighborhoods themselves aren't fixed, so one person's Glen Park (for instance) could be another's Outer Mission. Using a map is an uncontestedly superior interface for organizing geographic data. People find apartments on Craiglist despite the interface.

This is not to address the issue of ownership of listing data, or the case law, which latter isn't settled anyway.

_sentient• 14 years ago

Just because you don't like the interface, does not give you license to steal their data. I think HN is fairly ugly, but that doesn't mean I have a right to scrape the site in order to reproduce a slightly better looking, for-profit clone. At least not without PG's express permission.

Yahoo search would be a hell of a lot better if they could just scrape results from Google, but thankfully they lack the misguided sense of entitlement that Padmapper seems to suffer from.

rprasad13• 14 years ago

You actually do under the HN terms of use, which are permissive in the licenses they grant regarding HN posts. For example, see HN Magazine and various other HN-based sites and services.

But as you note, the important thing here is the "license." Craigslist offers paid licenses to app develoeprs, which PadMapper chose not to pay for.

juiceandjuice2• 14 years ago

The license doesn't cover websites, only mobile applications.

debacle10• 14 years ago

> The lawsuit raises questions about who should be able to use the vast amount of user-created data hosted on a site like Craigslist.

No, it really doesn't. This isn't going to be a long, exciting case challenging the underpinnings of copyright law and server terms of services. Padmapper isn't that company.

mootothemax3• 14 years ago

Agreed - there have been an awful lot of armchair lawyers asserting that there's more to this case than there really is.

debacle10• 14 years ago

There really is a lot to this case and a lot of precedent to be set, I wont deny that, but PadMapper doesn't have the resources to fight this battle.

rdl• 14 years ago

3taps, however, is.

mootothemax3• 14 years ago

I can't say that I'm that surprised; Padmapper wrote a whole blog post about how they were adding Craigslist support back to their site after being sent a C&D by Craigslist.

It's a shame for the guy behind Padmapper, but hopefully there'll be a lesson learnt about knowing which fights are worth picking versus knowing when to move on.

Somehow Google managed to overcome Yahoo and Altavista without scraping their data. And look at something like GumTree in the UK, which has always been miles ahead of Craigslist - no first mover advantage taken up there. Plus, GumTree's design has been equally woeful over the years.

jaems332• 14 years ago

Speaking of the UK, Foxtons also does a great job providing two interfaces for searching properties (list vs. map view) as well as organizing photos by room with specified dimensions. I wish their design was pretty much applied to Craiglist for property finding in the U.S.

Maascamp• 14 years ago

The tone in this article is unbelievable.

>The case raises questions over whether Craigslist is stifling innovation or simply protecting its data

There is no question. Craigslist isn't stopping Padmapper from being built, its stopping Padmapper from using Craigslist data. The continuous attempts to reframe Craigslist's actions as an attempt to stifle innovation seem almost surreal. I just can't understand how a community of professionals could support Padmapper in this.

praxulus4• 14 years ago

Because we're also a community of apartment seekers, and Padmapper makes Craigslist's data many times more useful. It's fine if Craigslist wants us to use their mapping service, but it doesn't exist yet. It's a purely selfish argument, but shutting down Padmapper does nothing but make our lives more difficult.

jetti3• 14 years ago

That is hardly shutting down Padmapper. It is just a roadblock and they would have to find another source of data. It has been clear for many years that Craigslist doesn't want their site scraped, so building a business that is so dependent that it would close if they lost that source the business would be ruined is extremely short sighted.

Edit: finished my thought that I left out mid-sentence.

jetti3• 14 years ago

I agree! On top of that, the ability to free-ride off of other's data without permission could be seen as an attempt to stiffle innovation as well. Why should I take the time to build something when (a) others can come along and use my data for free and take away my market share or (b) I can just wait a year and scrape the data off of somebody else and not do as much work.

It seems about time Craigslist re-evaluates creating an API. They have such vast amount of local data that others could use that they could easily charge for use and make some money there.

flinty3• 14 years ago

why isn't craigslist doing that then instead of suing someone who found a way to attract users and media attention?

baddox• 14 years ago

I interpret this different. I certainly think that Craigslist is stifling innovation (perhaps purposefully, perhaps not), but simply stifling innovation is not illegal.

IanDrake5• 14 years ago

> its stopping Padmapper from using Craigslist data

Is it Craigslist's data? Does Craigslist own the posts that caused women to be murdered and stolen property to be sold? If they own that data, then they must be culpable (to some degree) for these bad acts.

If they own it, they are now more than just a service provider (IMO) and can no longer be protected by the DCA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act

ig12• 14 years ago

No. I could write something illegal (libelous, inciting a crime, etc) and assign copyright to you without your consent.

sliverstorm2• 14 years ago

As I see it, they don't own the information, they own the database.

For example, they do not own the fact that you are selling a toothbrush. The do own the records on their servers which catalog the fact that you are selling a toothbrush.

Why? Because they are the ones who went to the trouble of gathering and storing those records.

This is somewhat akin to recording a verbal note from a customer in a book, and storing that book in a giant library. Sure, the user owns the information, but that doesn't mean you are obligated to let every Tom, Dick, and Harry come in and use your library how they see fit- it's your library, even though you do not hold the copyright to all the information stored there.

mark-r• 14 years ago

Craigslist clearly states that they don't own the data. But just because they don't own it doesn't make it public domain - the ownership belongs to the person who created the listing. To be totally free to repost the data you would need to get explicit permission from each owner.

icebraining6• 14 years ago

It's not Craigslist data, it's the users'. They just have a license.

/pedant

waterlesscloud3• 14 years ago

Great. Have the users provided a license to PadMapper? Where is this license agreement? How is it made?

tptacek• 14 years ago

Users are free to post their listings to both Padmapper and Craigslist. Padmapper is not therefore automatically entitled to repurpose Craigslist as a kind of ad-hoc aggregator API for user listings.

adestefan• 14 years ago

I'm also pretty confident that if it was the opposite (PadMapper suing Craigslist for using PadMapper data), then most people would be cheering on PadMapper.

dredmorbius7• 14 years ago

Craigslist makes use of both Google Maps and Yahoo Mapquest to present locations of individual properties through links on the CL site.

Note that these are free links, not paid-for API calls.

Who's free-riding whom?

joering2• 14 years ago

Craiglist is being known for not "innovating", at least when it comes to their platform, design etc. Heck, Craig himself said he tries to implement changes as little and as rarely as possible, because he himself does not truly know what makes Craiglist to constantly "tick" year after year.

Im sure that's why their try this lowball trick to defend themselves and show it to judge "hey we want to innovate, and Craiglist does not want to".

But sure its not their business what CL does...

ataggart2• 14 years ago

The posts on CL are no more "Craigslist data" than videos on YouTube are "Google data". The data is submitted by the users for the express purpose of being seen by other people. Does anyone seriously argue that users listing flats on CL do not want their listing found by other avenues? It is clear that Padmapper is providing a service beneficial to both suppliers and consumers of rental properties, and CL is using the police power of the state to prevent that benefit. Why they're doing this is still a mystery to me.

res0nat0r15• 14 years ago

The users of CL never agreed to let you copy their postings to whatever website you feel like, also it is against their TOS to do so:

Any copying, aggregation, display, distribution, performance or derivative use of craigslist or any content posted on craigslist whether done directly or through intermediaries (including but not limited to by means of spiders, robots, crawlers, scrapers, framing, iframes or RSS feeds) is prohibited. As a limited exception, general purpose Internet search engines and noncommercial public archives will be entitled to access craigslist without individual written agreements executed with CL that specifically authorize an exception to this prohibition if, in all cases and individual instances: (a) they provide a direct hyperlink to the relevant craigslist website, service, forum or content; (b) they access craigslist from a stable IP address using an easily identifiable agent; and (c) they comply with CL's robots.txt file; provided however, that CL may terminate this limited exception as to any search engine or public archive (or any person or entity relying on this provision to access craigslist without their own written agreement executed with CL), at any time and in its sole discretion, upon written notice, including, without limitation, by email notice.

adunsmoor• 14 years ago

Even if you go with the "it's not their data" argument Craigslist would seem to own the specific compilation of the data. I'd apply the same copyright principle as phone books or encyclopedias.

http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html

Craigslist invested in the infrastructure to enter, store, and display this information. They should be able to set their terms as to how it is used in aggregate.

qq662• 14 years ago

I don't really have a horse in the PadMapper/Craigslist debate but your analogy to YouTube is apt. I have a bunch of videos uploaded to YouTube, and I've permitted embedding because I know that even if a video is embedded somewhere I can still remove the video from my YouTube Channel Manager.

When I upload a video to YouTube, I do expect to retain control of it solely through my interactions with YouTube, and expect that when I take it down it gets taken down across all Google properties. I would be pretty angry if I found that my videos were on another site which had scraped YouTube's data and now was hosting my video without any ability for me to remove it.

slantyyz• 14 years ago

Stifling or not stifling, it's always a huge risk to build your business around someone else's technology, especially one that has a track record of not cooperating with third parties.

kaonashi• 14 years ago

On a purely philosophical level, the data 'belongs' to the people posting it.

dredmorbius7• 14 years ago

Actually, that's on a legal copyright data -- the expression of the information belongs to its author.

The facts themselves aren't subject to copyright.

Access through the CL site is governed by various computer use statutes. Though aggregation-via-proxy as PM are doing through Google cache raises some interesting issues.

wwweston3• 14 years ago

> I just can't understand how a community of professionals could support Padmapper in this.

Well, for one thing: different ideas about what constitutes fair game for property/control claims.

Not everything can be copyrighted or patented, and specifically, it's really not clear that a rental/for sale/wanted listing is actually a copyrightable work.

If that weren't enough, though, there's also not really a clear difference between what Padmapper does and a search engine -- it doesn't "steal" listings and put them wholesale on their site without attribution, it provides a geographic search that yields a limited digest and then points users to the original source.

jonny_eh2• 14 years ago

"unlawfully and unabashedly mass-harvesting and redistributing postings entrusted by craigslist users to their local craigslist sites"

Boo on Craigslist! They claim that they're protecting their users, but what harm is padmapper causing to people listing properties on Craigslist? Getting them more potential renters?

webwright• 14 years ago

What's it like to work as Craigslist and read this stuff? How could you be excited to come to work every day knowing that network effects have carved a deep moat around a site that people describe as "an exercise in torture"?

danielweber6• 14 years ago

"Yay I have job security" most likely.

nostromo3• 14 years ago

Commenters here make this sound like an open and shut case in favor of Craigslist. IANAL, so could someone explain why Google's index of material covered by copyright is ok and PadMapper's is not?

mootothemax3• 14 years ago

Most likely because Google aren't using their service to compete with, e.g., Craigslist. I also imagine that if you ask Google (especially with a C&D), they'll be more than happy to remove you from their index.

debacle10• 14 years ago

Because if you ask Google to remove you from their index, they will.

Rupert Murdoch has threatened this in the past. Each time he's backed down, because he knows that being removed from Google's index is akin to being removed from the Internet.

bluesnowmonkey• 14 years ago

Craigslist doesn't needs to be removed from the search index. They just need to prevent caching of posts, which is what 3Taps was abusing. Noarchive in robots.txt ought to take care of that.

coliveira3• 14 years ago

Which shows just how much Google profits from their virtual monopoly. If content companies knew that Google would make billions of dollars selling advertisement based on the content that they generated, it would be very hard for Google to pull the massive Internet scrapping that they managed to do from day one. It is interesting that people understand the illegitimacy of taking data from a single content source (Craigslist), but fail to see how unethical is to take data from everyone and sell advertisements based on that.

callmevlad2• 14 years ago

I can imagine some clever hacks where Padmapper uses Google targeted searches and Google's cache exclusively to get Craigslist data. Since Craigslist would never ask Google to remove them from their index, I wonder if Craigslist would still go after those who get their data as proxied by Google.

epoxyhockey• 14 years ago

I agree that this isn't a simple open and shut case. But, I doubt that PadMapper will take things the distance before rolling over.

It's not a new thing for a start-up to use Craigslist to gain an advantage (i.e. AirBnB), but they all seem to eventually be cut-off.

nchuhoai• 14 years ago

I was always wondering that. In essence, both cases appropriate CL's data for the users benefit, and both tend to send traffic back. I'm currently in a similar situation, where I have to ask myself how much i can scrape/aggregate/visualize 3rd party data that is useful to an user while stil providing value to the 3rd party.

I believe ultimately, it is at the 3rd partys (in this case Craigslist) discretion who is allowed to appropriate their data and who not.

jetti3• 14 years ago

Because you specifically grant access to your content using the robots.txt. If you don't want to have your site indexed, then you change your robots.txt. Or like it was said before, you ask Google to remove you from the index.

declan2• 14 years ago

CL allows Google (as a general-purpose search engine) in its TOU. It doesn't allow Padmapper/3taps. And in this context the TOU are enforceable. I wrote about this a few weeks ago here: https://plus.google.com/112961607570158342254/posts/HcCuHVG7...

unavoidable4• 14 years ago

[Law student here, but I don't know the full details of the claim CL is making]

The case doesn't actually seem open and shut at all. CL seems to have a "moral high ground" in that they provide the original service and the platform for users to post information, but the legal ground is more shaky. It is relatively settled in copyright law (which appears to be the main thrust of CL's argument) that effort alone does not award copyright protection[1] (or indeed, any property rights in general[2]).

For example, phone listings are not copyrightable, nor is news. The general question is whether there was creative expression (which can include 'creative' presentation or organization). If I were Padmapper, I would argue that classified listings are just a collection of facts, in which case they are not copyrightable. Padmapper does not actually use the listings directly, but extracts the information and puts it in a different format (their interface). On this point I think their case is relatively strong.

Where CL might be able to make a better case is their TOU. The TOU forms a contract between CL and their users. In almost all such prominent cases, this type of contract has been found to be enforceable[3]. If this line of reasoning is followed, then Padmapper will probably lose on this point because they agreed not to "copy, aggregate, distribute", etc.[4]

If this is a contractual claim the damages would be what CL could have expected if Padmapper had not 'breached' the contract - in this case I'm not sure that amount is particularly large, because Padmapper redirects to CL's site for the actual listings.

TLDR: copyright claim seems weak, but the contractual claim might succeed. The trademark stuff seems like a red herring and is CL throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks.

[EDIT: see below, I overlooked the fact that Padmapper is no longer using CL data directly, so they might not be bound by the TOU at all. Same goes for 3Taps since they use Google's cache. Looking stronger for Padmapper]

[1] Feist v. Rural, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural

[2] INS v. AP, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_News_Service_v._A...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickwrap

[4] CL Terms of Use (see section 3), http://www.craigslist.org/about/terms.of.use

nostromo3• 14 years ago

Thanks, very interesting!

unavoidable4• 14 years ago

In the meantime, CL might be able to get an injunction to stop Padmapper from using their listings, and that itself might be what they're after until a settlement is reached.

potatolicious4• 14 years ago

Since Padmapper is going through a third party - did they actually agree to the TOU?

p0ckets• 14 years ago

Is it clear that Padmapper is bound by the TOU of CL? Padmapper probably has a contractual relationship with 3Taps, and Google probably has a contractual relationship with CL. I'm not sure 3Taps has entered into a contractual relationship with Google by scraping their cache, but even if they did, what is the legal agreement between CL and Padmapper?

nhebb• 14 years ago

I don't know if it's open and shut either - but not because of the search analogy. That's covered in the CL ToS, sections 3 and 5. (http://www.craigslist.org/about/terms.of.use)

My problem is with section 3. CONTENT AND CONDUCT, part a, where they first state "CL does not control, is not responsible for and makes no representations or warranties with respect to any user content." Then it goes on to state that posters assign a bevy of licensing rights to CL for the use of the content.

How can they claim copyright to content and at the same time aver that they don't control it?

unavoidable4• 14 years ago

This is where the lawsuit gets _legally_ interesting. Craigslist can't really claim copyright over the listings themselves (see post above), but they can certainly restrict user rights through their terms of use (which is a contract). Generally, contracts can be used to reduce a set of rights a person has against another (e.g. waivers), but it cannot grant rights that they did not have in the first place.

So the first part of that statement is akin to waiver, so that someone can't sue CL for what the listings say. The second part is a claim on copyright and licensing, which they may or may not have.

jaysonelliot• 14 years ago

"(Craigslist) said it offered a license that would have allowed PadMapper to use its data on mobile applications but that the competitor did not accept the terms."

But on the other hand, "users and developers are exasperated with Craigslist’s insistence on preserving an outdated interface and design."

I don't know the legal merits of either party's position, but from an ethical perspective, I tend to side with Craigslist here. Dissatisfaction with a commercial site's UI is not just cause for using their data without permission, particularly if they had made an effort to offer a licensing agreement, whatever the terms might have been.

wickedchicken2• 14 years ago

I see this from the opposite viewpoint, that PadMapper is operating as a search engine designed to help you find the right Craigslist posts for your apartment hunt. Claiming that PadMapper's success is from Craigslist failing to 'provide a good UI' is like suggesting that Google News' success is because newspaper companies failed to provide good article SEO. Instead, it's a different modality of content discovery, and it ultimately redirects you to the original source.

In my (personal) opinion, I would argue that the content providers or aggregators and search engines benefit synergistically. CL and Belgian newspapers appear to disagree.

eli10• 14 years ago

I don't think this has any legal bearing for anyone, but it's worth noting that Google respects publishers who do not wish to be indexed.

Kadrith3• 14 years ago

Does PadMapper respect the robots.txt file?

waterlesscloud3• 14 years ago

For that analogy to hold, PadMapper would have to be pulling data from a large number of sources. The value that Google News provides is that it aggregates a very large number of sources. PadMapper does not.

soup10• 14 years ago

I don't like Craigslist because of lock in. Sellers must sell there because they are the biggest market, buyers must buy there because they are the biggest market. Everyone is locked in.

Lock-in is super common(and often unintentional or unavoidable), but it goes against the ideal of equal opportunity and competitive markets that rewards companies for a continuous commitment to quality and innovation.

I feel that craigslist has done nothing wrong except for standing in the doorway when other people who want to innovate and improve things are trying to get through (like PadMapper).

eli10• 14 years ago

True, but it's also very easy as a buyer (or seller) to use more than one site. Nothing about Craigslist is exclusive and in that sense the lock-in is very weak.

A Craigslist competitor doesn't need a huge market share to be viable. For me as a seller, it just has to expand my audience of buyers enough to justify the small amount of time it takes to post and manage a second listing.

res0nat0r15• 14 years ago

The reason why Craigslist is valuable is because of it's large network. It is obvious that smaller sites like PadMapper want to slowly try and chip away at Craiglist content (see PadLister) after they hopefully gain enough traction to supplant them. Padmapper / Padlister are fine to start their own sites and have users come and post their listings there, but not to copy content from Craigslist after they specifically asked them to stop.

iamwil3• 14 years ago

The license offered by craigslist was for a mobile application only. There was nothing offered for websites. You can see this as either, 'license offered with terms' or 'no license offered at all'

dclowd9901• 14 years ago

How do people not see this for exactly what it is: The same situation as we are finding with cable providers not wanting to be dumb pipes. The only difference is people don't pay money to CL. They just give CL all their information, and CL decides what to do with it.

Craigslist has no divine right to its users' information; it just happens to be the only viable option. If Craigslist didn't exist, someone else would, and would probably do it better.

If Craigslist wants to continue existing, they should take advantage of the fact that they are the go-to for online classifieds, create a modest subscription-based API and let the information flow.

jacoblyles6• 14 years ago

The problem is that Craigslist has a monopoly. They use that monopoly to shut down competitors, resulting in millions of hours of lost time for users every month.

antidaily2• 14 years ago

Craig is paranoid about changing the UI of craigslist. So while I don't feel they're unjust in suing, he is indeed stifling innovation.

ben0x539• 14 years ago

Why wouldn't he offer an alternative UI for craigslist while leaving the original running?

rabidsnail2• 14 years ago

At least they're not claiming a violation of the CFAA (which I think would actually be a more straightforward argument).

debacle10• 14 years ago

Care you explain? I don't know what the CFAA is.

rabidsnail2• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act

The relevant part of the act would be: "Intentionally accessing a computer without authorization to obtain ... information from any protected computer". A "protected computer" is a computer "which is used in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce or communication", which fits Craisglist pretty well.

Violation of the clause I quoted is a criminal offense with potential jail time.

binaryorganic• 14 years ago

How does this differ from Readability or Instapaper stripping advertisements away and serving users pure content in their respective interfaces? I'm not sure what they're doing is illegal.

bcbrown• 14 years ago

Readability is just client-side code. Think of it as just a different implementation of a browser that ignores some markup and renders some markup in a non-standard way.

oacgnol• 14 years ago

There's no doubting the legality of Padmapper scraping Craigslist data, so I think now would be a good time for him to innovate and really push his other product, PadLister. If Eric were to write another blog post, I'd make PadLister the focus of it and start building a new community there.

bicknergseng• 14 years ago

How Craigslist can evolve:

Become a for-pay API.

Thoughts?

davidcollantes• 14 years ago

It is up to Craigslist, and Craigslist only. I prefer not to speculate.

They already offer an API for mobile.

robomartin• 14 years ago

Here are a couple of legal questions (not taking sides, just honest questions):

Does the data belong to Craigslist or to those posting on Craigslist?

If so, is this in their TOS? I don't remember ever clicking a checkbox that says "we own your listing" whenever I have sold stuff on Craigslist or posted jobs/gigs. Maybe real estate is different.

Why would I want to give Craigslist ownership of my listing? If I were posting a property for rent I would probably want other services to pick-up the listing.

Similarly, why do they own the Copyright on something I have written?

Again, I don't remember ever giving that away either.

rm445• 14 years ago

Last time this was discussed, people posted excerpts from Craigslist's terms, in which the user grants Craigslist the right to (i) Use their post, (ii) defend against others copying it.

So, I haven't verified it, but the idea seems to be the user owns their post, and could post it elsewhere if they wanted - but Craigslist has the right to stop other sites copying posts direct from Craigslist.

learc8317• 14 years ago

There was a recent case where the judge ruled that a company that didn't own a copyright, but was assigned a license in order to sue infringers on the owners behalf, didn't in fact have standing to sue.

RandallBrown2• 14 years ago

I'm fairly sure that craigslist does NOT own the data, the person posting the listing does. The article mentions this.

That's what makes this a little less open and shut, at least to me.

zspade• 14 years ago

Has there ever been any consideration at some kind of partnership? I know there may be some bad blood at this point, but I don't see how it wouldn't benefit both Padmapper and Craigslist to potentially work together to create an alternate Craigslist(using the same data). The contracts would have to be thorough about profit sharing, but it seems at least possible.

If people had a secondary Craigslist portal they could use to access the same data, while avoiding the shitty interface, more and more might migrate over to the new 'design'. The current Craislist design has been dated for some time, and I just can't see a startup or even a big player not moving into their space with a better design and interface.

iamwil3• 14 years ago

Eric from Padmapper has tried to get an audience with them, but both Craig and Jim wouldn't take a meeting. They sent a license, but that was only for mobile apps. Most people use padmapper though the website.

keeptrying• 14 years ago

Heartbreaking.

Padmapper is the best apartment rental interface out there. The author has been single handedly working on this for 3-4 years and constantly improving his system.

Legally he might not have been in the right but we should be helping him out not uselessly debating and casting judgement.

If theres anyone who exmplifies the true spirit of Hacker News it would be the author of PadMapper.

greyboy2• 14 years ago

> Legally he might not have been in the right but we should be helping him out not uselessly debating and casting judgement.

If he's not "legally not in the right," why should I be helping him (doesn't that imply casting a judgement - that PadMapper is elevated above CraigsList because it's "the best apartment rental interface our there")?

What if the tables were turned and CraigsList was violating PadMapper's TOS? Would you be willing to help CraigsList (they serve more than only apartment listings)?

Should somebody be rewarded, even if (legally) not in the right, just because he/she is a hard worker/smarty pants/exemplifies the True Hacker Spirit?

I often wonder if there is some sort of unwritten clause that You-Must-Pull-For-The-Underdog to join Hacker News? (In the name of Divine Disruption, of course.)

potatolicious4• 14 years ago

> "If he's not "legally not in the right," why should I be helping him (doesn't that imply casting a judgement - that PadMapper is elevated above CraigsList because it's "the best apartment rental interface our there")?"

Because legal right and moral right sometimes intersect, but not nearly always.

Because once in a blue moon somebody comes along and creates something with such enormous public good that it forces us to reconsider the context of both legal and moral righteousness.

ChuckMcM6• 14 years ago

This isn't surprising of course, it is their data after all, but it brings up the 'easy problem' / 'hard problem' (E/H-P) conundrum quite nicely.

The conundrum is that it is 'easy' to take an existing, quality data source, and re-skin it for broader market appeal. This is something that Craigslist should be doing but perhaps through poor management are not. It is 'hard' to take a conceptual model of skinning and building a quality data source behind it.

As I said elsewhere, the PadMapper guys might have taken this to Craigslist and said "Look what we can do with your data, lets make happy music together." and then debated the terms. Or they could take their UX to the venture capital world and say "Look at this cool product we could build if we had access to a database with Craig list's quality" and debate cap tables and dilution (assuming they got to that stage of a term sheet).

But they chose the third route, "Lets see how long we can get away with this..." and the timer on that just ran out.

Sadly, this third path makes the first two paths much harder. Craigslist already sees them as the 'enemy' and VCs will see them as a team that makes poor choices. Both views make it harder (but certainly not impossible) to consummate a deal. However, from the blog and from previous postings here it seems they made those choices with their eyes open.

learc8317• 14 years ago

>This isn't surprising of course, it is their data after all,

But that's the thing. It isn't their data. They specifically say so in their TOS. The copyright belongs to the user.

You can't say the listing belongs to the user (to protect you from liability) on one hand, and then say the data belongs to craigslist on the other.

They could always do what map companies have done forever to prevent copyright. Facts can't be copyrighted so map makers insert fictional cities.

If someone copies the map they are copying the fictional city and thus violating their copyright.

Craigslist could add a fictional listing here and there that they do own the copyright to.

mikeryan• 14 years ago

I have no idea how this is going to playout but if there's a copyright argument to be made, it won't be on the copyright of each listing, but the copyright on the compilation of the listings.

You can't say the listing belongs to the user on one hand, and then say the data belongs to craigslist on the other.

You can in fact make this argument in the case of compilations in copyright law - think a compilation of short stories or one of those "Songs of the 90s albums" - the initial authors still own their work, but the entity which creates the compilation still owns the right to the entire compiled work.

(I intentionally edited your statement - don't want to bring liability into this, I think its a separate issue and a bit of a red herring w/r/t this discussion).

lobotryas3• 14 years ago

The individual posts belong to the users, that is true. However one post alone is worthless. What's valuable is Craigslist's collection of posts with lots of relevant data (location, description, price, etc). This collection belongs to Craigslist because their servers provide the environment for it, plus they wrote the architecture and back-end to support it.

ChuckMcM6• 14 years ago

I hear you, but I don't know if the courts will agree with your interpretation. The reason for that is that the courts will look at the consequence of having that interpretation widely accepted and the impact on the current state of affairs. There are many many places where this has been litigated and the courts always come down on the side of the data aggregator owning rights to the data aggregated.

If PadMapper wanted to legally exploit the fact that the users own the listings, not Craigslist, they would have to establish a relationship with the user and get the information directly from them. They could contact the listing owners and suggest they list on PadListing. They can 'spiff' people who do so (meaning give them some benefit if they list on PadListing and the person discovers and rents through PadMapper). If they can prove that the listing owner asked them to list their property, Craigslist can't sue.

Alternatively PadMapper "need only"[1] create their own apartment listing service to have their own database where people listing apartments go to them directly. And that is a much harder thing to do than something which scrapes the listings from Craigslist and drops them on to a Google Map.

As a proof-of-concept, PadMapper is excellent. As a product, it has a data contamination issue.

[1] The scare quotes are there to acknowledge that its a challenge to get people to move from the known, to the new. I am trying to move people from Google to a new search service, its hard, its slow, but its the only way to do this and avoid this sort of litigation.

res0nat0r15• 14 years ago

The users never agreed to their data being displayed on any other sites besides CL. If they wanted that to happen they would personally place their listings on other websites, or sign up for some type of 'post your classified add to 100s of sites from us' service, which CL clearly is not.

DASD• 14 years ago

With regard to the re-skin there was quite some external interest in this around 2009. Wired Magazine asked several leading designers to present their version of Craigslist redux.

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_...

An article in the same interest, "Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess" ( http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_... ).

erichocean• 14 years ago

Your kidding, right? Until today, I had never heard of Padmapper, but I have hated (like everyone else) CLs interface.

CL just put them on the map in a big way as being "Craigslist with a good UI" -- so good, they had to sue. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Apreche• 14 years ago

If what 3Taps is doing is illegal, then what Google is doing is illegal. It's a search engine.

intended• 14 years ago

If you send google a c and d, they will comply.

Pad mapper was sent a c&d and decided to not comply. Hence the case.

Edit: and as has been pointed out, google isn't competing with Craig's list.

Padmapper's gameplan is to disintermediate Craigslist away.

declan2• 14 years ago

Craigslist has the better of the arguments; both Padmapper and 3taps are violating (and probably bound by) the terms of use agreement: https://plus.google.com/112961607570158342254/posts/HcCuHVG7...

mnicole3• 14 years ago

I think Padmapper in particular is in a unique position where while they started with CL listings, it's proven itself an invaluable enough service to enough of us to the point where I'd use it exclusively to list my apartment over Craigslist. I'd even pay month-to-month for exclusive or time-sensitive listings given the way I use it.

Whether or not Padmapper is in the right here, CL's long-standing stance in not evolving their UI or creating a decent API is going to bite them in the ass. Helping people sort your content is now more important for them than the idea that change is bad or time-consuming. As many people have said in the past, it wouldn't take much to really bring CL up-to-speed, but if they don't want to do it themselves, they should at least make it an option for others to pay a fee to use the data.

Edit: Didn't realize http://www.padlister.com/ already existed. Score.

MnkyPwz• 14 years ago

In my mind this article, and moreover the lawsuit itself, may be a glimpse into what might be a revolutionary revamp of Craigslist and it's community.

Its no secret that the CL community have frequently requested an update to the UI as well as many additional features to be added in order to make using the site much more friendly; although with no changes being implemented at this point. I look at this litigation as a foreshadowing of what may be in store for the CL community.

With that said, shutting off access of those parties utilizing their services without proper consent may be the first in a strategic battle plan for the CL team in order to ensure they have the most optimal acceptance of their revamp.

Anyone else see it this way, or am I indulging wishful thinking?

blorenz• 14 years ago

I hope that PadMapper does not back down. Craigslist is making their data publicly displayed. Consumers consume it - be it people or machines. It will be interesting how this plays out. Screen scraping is analogous to the analog loophole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_loophole.

rezaman• 14 years ago

I wonder why craigslist hasn't shut down http://housingmaps.com yet. They appear to be doing the exact same thing as padmapper and mapskrieg, albeit with a much smaller feature set.

nlh• 14 years ago

I find this sort of thing very frustrating to read:

"The search tool is antiquated, the images are poor or nonexistent, locations of listings are hardly dependable, and you can forget about an integrated way to save anything for later reference. There is a litany of shortcomings that come with the Craigslist apartment search; they are many and they are painful..."

If you don't like the site, don't like the UI, and can't stand the UX, then don't use the site. Nobody is forcing you to search for an apartment on CL. Nobody is forcing owners to list apartments on CL.

And so now we get to the meat ...

"...Your site is chock-full of data I need..."

Ahh...data you NEED.

So here's the thing. If you truly need the data, then you need Craigslist and you have an obligation to use it the way they (and only they) want you to use it. If you don't like the way they want you to use it, there are several choices:

* Go work for them and convince them to improve it. * Build a better mousetrap.

The former probably won't succeed, so the latter seems to be the way to go.

Look, there's nothing preventing landlords from listing their apartments on Craigslist AND your new Craigslist replacement/improvement. They're not locked in. If they were, that would be a whole different discussion - then we can talk about anti-competitive, innovation-stifling behavior. But that's not the case - the only reason people list apartments on CL is because it works. Despite the bad UI. Hence the reason CL hasn't changed it.

So it's the job of some enterprising entrepreneur not only ro build a better mousetrap, but convince people to use it. Until that happens, as much as I too dislike the Craigslist UI, I can't say I support PadMapper on this one.

crazygringo• 14 years ago

> If you don't like the site, don't like the UI, and can't stand the UX, then don't use the site. Nobody is forcing you to search for an apartment on CL. Nobody is forcing owners to list apartments on CL.

Yes they are being "forced" to list on CL, because as much as you hate the UX, UI, etc., that's where the buyers are. And as much as the buyers hate the site, that's where the sellers are. I hate CL, but I was forced to use it because lock-in makes it impossible for anyone else to compete.

Goronmon5• 14 years ago

Apartments aren't a fungible item. If I'm looking for an apartment in a certain area and 75% of the apartments in that area are only being listed on Craigslist, then how can I realistically "choose" to use another avenue for apartment listings?

Look, there's nothing preventing landlords from listing their apartments on Craigslist AND your new Craigslist replacement/improvement.

There are huge barriers preventing landlords from listing their apartments outside of craigslist. Nothing is as popular, so why waste the time? They don't have hours to scour the internet looking for alternatives, nor do they probably want to have to manage listings at many difference sites.

sliverstorm2• 14 years ago

There are huge barriers preventing landlords from listing their apartments outside of craigslist. Nothing is as popular, so why waste the time?

I think you have a flawed idea of what constitutes "huge barriers". The only thing stopping them from listing elsewhere is a cost-benefit analysis? I weep.

ChuckMcM6• 14 years ago

I think you are looking at this backwards. How many listings are there on Craigslist for a given city? 100, 200, 500, 1000? (I know city dependent)

There is absolutely no reason that PadMapper cannot call them on the phone, and ask them to list with PadMapper. They can make it trivially easy supporting email, phone, or fax listings. They can sell them on using PadMapper.

Many apartments are owned by Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) there are dozens (not hundreds) of those. You can sell the REIT on the concept of easy listings that are so much better/cleaner/easier than Craigslist.

Craigslist was created when near every apartment was listed in the Classified Ads in the print newspaper. That wasn't "lock in" it was an opportunity, they sold these folks on lower costs (since Classifieds were a money fund for newspapers) Landlords hated the extortionate prices that the newspapers charged but they didn't have an alternative, Craigslist gave them that alternative, they moved.

So the 'answer' here is to actually build a classifieds business around rental space. That takes more than slinging some node.js and scraping other sites. Granted its 'easier' for a technical person to do it that way, but its not a 'sustainable' way of doing it.

usaar3336• 14 years ago

> If you truly need the data, then you need Craigslist and you have an obligation to use it the way they (and only they) want you to use it.

This is what we call a monopoly. Many people (apartment hunters in this context) need to use Craigslist because there are no viable alternatives. Just like you have to pay your local utility for water or power -- there are alternatives, but not viable ones.

And a two-sided monopoly is a very real monopoly.

The difference is that other monopolies get regulated; Craigslist is not. Given their current behavior, I'd strongly support a law that explicitly denies craigslist any exclusive right to their listing data.

stcredzero16• 14 years ago

> Look, there's nothing preventing landlords from listing their apartments on Craigslist AND your new Craigslist replacement/improvement. They're not locked in.

That's disingenuous. Craigslist is pretty much the only game in town in many places. Let's say you need to find a person with a specific need, willing to pay $2000 a month. If you don't find this person, you have to pay the $2000 a month. How do you feel about not using Craigslist now?

darma12• 14 years ago

Too much obsession over UI.

What people really "need" is the raw data.

If they want to make some UI that they like, then they can do it. If they want to offer this to others, they can do it.

If they want to load the data into some SQL database, they can do it.

If they want split the data into some other format using csplit and load into some other faster database, they can do it.

If they want to extract a portion of a raw file and just use agrep on that, they can do it.

The point is that UI is a personal decision.

Because some people do not like CL's bare bones UI doesn't give them the right to do anything. Because some people don't like bloated and clumsy web interfaces and prefer text commands doesn't give them the right to do anything either.

But people can't be stopped from making personal decisions about how to process data. Public data.

It's funny how some websites think they "own" data that is given to them. Do they "need" this data? Yes, they do.

bugsbunnyak• 14 years ago

Padmapper ought to do a better job of leveraging this publicity. Apartment season is in full swing in college towns across the country and they need to push really hard to get the word out about Padlister: in particular, the fact that it will cross-post to Craigslist automatically (so you don't lose any viewers). This doesn't matter for realtors - they already have systems to autospam Craiglist. But it does matter to self-listers. They could get good traction targeting roommate listers and seekers as a way to build organic listings and eyeballs. Create a viral campaign. I would share it, and I know plenty of other people who would because Padmapper has made such a difference.

dap2• 14 years ago

"You're not wrong, [Craigslist], you're just an asshole."

I don't know who's legally right, but I've got no sympathy for Craigslist. They've got a monopoly on the data (whether right or wrong) and refuse to either build a decent UI for consumers or let other people do so.

That sounds bad, but I think you can't know how infuriating it really is until you've tried to find housing in a town where CL is the only real option and where demand far exceeds supply (where you spend many, many hours on the effort because of intense demand-side competition).

learc8317• 14 years ago

If you look at the case of Righthaven (copyright troll), a federal judge ruled that even though the copyright owner granted them a license to sue infringers to stop copying, Righthaven didn't have standing to sue because they didn't actually own the copyright.

aggronn• 14 years ago

http://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-anyone-built-any-products-on-...

In particular, read the comments by Craig himself. Funny how these things change.

IanDrake5• 14 years ago

Snip from Craig - "Actually, we take issue with only services which consume a lot of bandwidth, it's that simple."

I guess that wasn't true.

AndyKelley• 14 years ago

Craigslist makes its data publicly available. How can it be illegal to access that data? It may be against Craigslist's Terms of Service, but that means it's up to Craigslist to figure out how to prevent scraping. It does not mean the law needs to be involved.

dotborg• 14 years ago

Craiglist doesn't display ads

dredmorbius7• 14 years ago

Craigslist is ads.

bherms• 14 years ago

I know Calacanis is a polarizing figure in the community, but I've always agreed with him that you shouldn't piggyback your company's success on top of a single service.

edit: especially one that doesn't allow you to use their data in the first place.

allardschip• 14 years ago

Why did Craigslist decided to sue padmapper but let housingmaps.com live for many years is puzzling to me. Anyone has an idea why?

drumdance2• 14 years ago

Compare & contrast the CL lawyers' behavior with the Jack Daniels trademark lawyers a few days ago.

joshAg• 14 years ago

this reminds me a lot of Feist V Rural [1]; I just hope it turns out the same way.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural

blissofbeing• 14 years ago

I feel like there is a win win solution for everyone here.

How about Padmapper develop a plugin for chrome/firefox that once you go to a craigslist appartment list page, it does what it does now: loops through them all and displays them on a google map. Padmapper could even develop on API on their end which handled all the hard work of actually finding the correct address of the posts and sends it back to the plugin in a nice format and all it has to do is plot in on a map that the plugin places on the craigslist page.

This sounds legal to me, as Padmapper isn't actually storing anything, and it puts a UI on top of the apartment search page.

danielweber6• 14 years ago

That sounds similar to RECAP, which is a free interface to the for-money PACER database of legal filings.

RECAP is on a better legal footing because the filings are public domain instead of owned by someone.

drumdance2• 14 years ago

Reminds me of Craig Newmark's lawsuit against the networks a few years back. In that case he wanted to assert the right to use DVRs to skip commercials.

pg3• 14 years ago

Craig Newmark said on Quora that the reason they didn't like people building stuff on top of Craigslist was simply the extra bandwidth they consumed:

http://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-anyone-built-any-products-on-...

But now that 3Taps has found an ingenious way to get at the data with zero extra bandwidth cost to Craigslist (by retrieving it from the Google cache rather than CL itself), it's clear that what Craigslist really dislikes is competition.

While Craigslist is probably within their legal rights here, this case shows that for all their talk about their benevolent aims, Craigslist is no different from other companies.

sulife2• 14 years ago

Just like they try to keep the facade up that CL barely makes money. They are swimming in so much $ it's insane.

astral303• 14 years ago

Proof?

president• 14 years ago

source?

binarysolo• 14 years ago

For the immense value they provide to the hundreds of millions of users, having a 100-200M revenue is not "swimming in [insane] $".

They're profitable alright, but let's not kid ourselves that they have by choice left a LOT of money on the table, which is why all these value-added services are trying to take a share of the CL-pie.

untog• 14 years ago

what Craigslist really dislikes is competition

Hm, would you not say that what Craigslist really dislikes is their competition piggy-backing off their data? Craigslist seemed quite happy with the existing situation until Padmapper launched their own listing service.

Though I agree that it's not in the spirit of a .org, if such concept exists.

kloncks• 14 years ago

No.

It's not their data. It's ours, as the users. Craigslist doesn't own anything I upload to them.

The reason PadMapper exists is because Craigslist refuses to not suck.

juiceandjuice2• 14 years ago

When I think of Padmapper, I think of the naughtiness:

"Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by imagination.

Sam Altman of Loopt is one of the most successful alumni, so we asked him what question we could put on the Y Combinator application that would help us discover more people like him. He said to ask about a time when they'd hacked something to their advantage—hacked in the sense of beating the system, not breaking into computers. It has become one of the questions we pay most attention to when judging applications."

colinsidoti• 14 years ago

Naughtiness was using CL to seed their site in the first place. After the Cease and Desist, using 3Taps as a source CL data was simply walking into a lawsuit.

Generally, I don't think you want your naughtiness to tie you up in a legal battle.

tlogan• 14 years ago

Craig is doing things right: he is not greedy and he doing it with vision of general purpose. If craiglist is run by a person who investors like to choose as a founder they will be sold for 10M a long time ago.

The problem with a lot of startups in SV is that their only objective is to make money. Nothing else. Craigslist is very very rare exception.

Now lets downvoting starts...

jacoblyles6• 14 years ago

Flogging yourself doesn't make you righteous. Doing good for the world does.

Craigslist wastes several human lifetimes worth of time every month through maintaining a monopoly product with a shitty UI and refusing to let anyone innovate on top of it. They hold back progress and they are evil. They are the IE6 of classified ads.

vellum• 14 years ago

Craig Newmark now says (6/25/12):

"folks, please remember, #craigslist community feedback massively against the use of their stuff for the profit of others."

https://twitter.com/craignewmark/status/217323728260972544

mckoss2• 14 years ago

Why would apt owners NOT want their listings cross posted and distributed to the largest possible audience? I call BS.

Zakuzaa• 14 years ago

I have heard people saying "we love competition". I wonder if they really mean it. Not saying one cant't love competition, just that the phrase is used so commonly that it's hard to digest.

I, for one, hate my competitors. Basic insticts perhaps?

Is not disliking your competitors something that is practiced by majority? OR is it at least very common? Common enough to point at a company that doesn't follow it?

meric• 14 years ago

It depends; If you are trying to start a new industry, you'd like your competitors more, because they validate the market. My university lecturer told me in the 90's (or 80's) he was starting a bottled water company; Back then no one drinks bottled water. Every month or so the half dozen bottle water company startups in Australia have a meet up; and they were all friends.

Hmm, sounds familiar...

malandrew4• 14 years ago

FWIW, the legal basis of suing because of bandwidth and server load is called a trespass to chattels

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trespass_to_chattels

ttran42• 14 years ago

Craigslist is a business. What makes it right for another company to profit from the contents they generated through the platform that they build?

Yes, they got an early advantage into the market and has the critical mass that many company can seem to compete with but why take that away from them because they refuse to update/add new features.

Instead of piggybacking on them and relying on their data to earn money, shouldn't Padmapper focus on building their own content. Isn't that where innovation comes from? Beating an existing company by creating a better platform?

jacoblyles6• 14 years ago

Craigslist is a business. And a monopoly, like Microsoft in the 90s. Didn't they have the right to decide which browsers are packaged with their OS? Don't they even have the right to decide which browsers run on their OS?

dredmorbius7• 14 years ago

Yep. I told you so: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4219543

jahewson2• 14 years ago

Craigslist is probably within their legal rights here

I would really call this into question for the copyright claims. The key claim is copyright infringement, and the listings on Craigslist are almost certainly unprotected, much like telephone directory listings. They are statements of fact rather than creative works.

Craigslist may attempt to claim copyright over reproduction of their database as a whole (compilation), but the Supreme Court has ruled that in order to be eligible the compilation must be "original in its selection, coordination, and arrangement", and Craigslist can hardly claim that.

The breach of contract claims may be stronger though. The pages on the Google cache presumably still contain the ToS, and if they apply (who knows?) then PadMapper's use of Craigslist would likely constitute a breach. A ruling on this would be very interesting.

DanBlake• 14 years ago

Another thought is that padmapper is not /copying/ the data - They are summarizing it.

So there could be a entire listing for a SF apartment with lots of details and padmapper would not copy any of it- instead they would just make notes - 3 bedroom, location, price, pictures and then link back to CL if someone clicks the listing on PM

learc8317• 14 years ago

>The breach of contract claims may be stronger though. The pages on the Google cache presumably still contain the ToS

Would this work? Can a phonebook just put a section at the beginning of this page that by reading this book you are agreeing to the ToS which state you can't copy it?

I know most ToS contain a section about by using this service you are agreeing to the ToS.

But I think there is a good argument that Padmapper isn't actual using the service since they aren't getting the information from Craigslist's servers.

Am I using a service, and thus bound by contract if I look at a screengrab of a website on a third party website (that contains a ToS).

I've said before though that Craigslist could invent fictitious entries, and sue Padmapper for copying those creative works, just like mapmakers do with fake towns.

robotsgz2• 14 years ago

Not sure I would call that ingenious. But your point is sorely need of being made more often.

How many other websites use arguments like "bandwidth" to falsely portray competitors who access their publicly shared data as somehow in the wrong?

Many. Some here on HN. No need to name names.

No doubt even Google would complain about people "scraping" search results.

To me, it is a joke. Because the people who complain use automation to access, retrieve, organise and serve information and thereby establish their business. Only then to try to forbid others from using automation to do the same.

And all the while, it's NOT THEIR INFORMATION. This is not Craigslist's data. It's users' data.

It belongs to users, who are today's "publishers" and possess all those good ole publisher's rights. (Though they may naively license them out.)

rprasad13• 14 years ago

The users chose to give Craiglist permission to use their data. They did not choose to give PadMapper their data, or else they would have posted their listing to PadMapper.

They did give Craiglist permission to prevent others from using their data without permission. In this context, scraping any version of Craiglist's site (whether CL itself or a third party cache) falls within Craiglist's rights under the license they were given, and within the user's expectations of what Craiglist will do with their data.

paulsutter• 14 years ago

Paul -

It's easy to interpret your post to mean that stealing/reusing data just because you can is fair competitive practice. Please do clarify because your words mean a lot to people and your post might be interpreted that way.

Hilarious to expose their sanctimonious nonsense though.

ChuckMcM6• 14 years ago

I'm sure Craig was speaking truthfully when he made his comment. But he is but one piece of a whole, and that whole includes folks who count the pennies. And business person associated with Craigslist would know that the only value Craigslist has is its listings. Giving those away to be re-used by another web site would never fly with such a person. I don't doubt for a minute when you tell someone is taking money out of your pocket that you need to fund your operations (I know, I know its more nuanced than that but its the gist of the argument) well you an roll over or you can fight.

If they go to court and get an opinion it should be really helpful as a guide for other entrepreneurs who see re-processing the information on the web in new ways as the foundation for their business.

darma12• 14 years ago

You mean, like Blekko?

The simple, inconvenient truth is most folks who are making money from the web, like search engines, are not content creators (nor content owners), they are content publishers... who publish for free. "Are you a non-technical person who wants to get something onto the web? No problem. We'll help you with that, for free. Just give us some personal info about you so we can solicit money from advertisers."

(Placement, e.g., paid placement, where the eyeballs are more likely to see something, for a fee, is another matter.)

tomwalsham• 14 years ago

Can you comment on the status of Priceonomics (YC) in this context? They're building a rich interface on top of CL listings data, presumably using 3Taps to get the volume of data without drawing attention.

Is the endgame for these companies to replace the content source, or to hope (or fight for) a legal precedent to 'open' CL data for third party usage?

RandallBrown2• 14 years ago

Why doesn't Craigslist want PadMapper using their information? (I know that's irrelevant to the lawsuit)

The more people that use PadMapper and find CraigsList entries on there, the more people that are using CraigsList.

Why wouldn't they want that? If I were a real estate listing company, I'd want my data to be found on as many real estate search apps as possible.

slig3• 14 years ago

One reason is that once they're big enough, they can just flip the bird at craigslist and use their own data.

beatpanda• 14 years ago

This is absolute bullshit. Craigslist is located in San Francisco, and they should be intimately aware of how fucking difficult it is to find an apartment in this city with Craigslist's garbage interface.

Are there any Craigslist employees reading this? Would any of you like a full time job sorting through the cesspool that is your apartment listings page? Oh, you wouldn't? I don't blame you, because that's my job right now, and PadMapper is the only thing helping me preserve what's left of my sanity.

Do a better job than them or shut the fuck up. Stop hurting people by trying to shut PadMapper down.

callmeed• 14 years ago

Google indexes craigslist (obviously)

https://www.google.com/search?btnG=1&pws=0&q=iphone+...

They even have cached thumbnails and you can likely use their custom search API to get results, snippets, etc.

Is what 3taps does that different?

user49598• 14 years ago

A few of humble opinions:

Padmapper is probably getting enough publicity out of this to get over the critical mass problem and will be able to rely on their own listings.

Craigslist content is user generated, and the copyrights remain property of the users. While facts aren't copyrightable anything that padmapper displays that isn't just a fact, photos or a realtor's description for example, is a copyright violation.

This is why sites like stack overflow are awesome, because they licence "their" content, aka your work cc-wiki and claim no ownership.

The bummer here is not that craigslist is suing over unauthorized data access, it's that your work is too restrictively licenced on their site to be of maximum benefit to you.

njharman• 14 years ago

> Users and developers are exasperated with Craigslist’s insistence on preserving an outdated interface and design.

Well then go use / collect your own apt listings, lobby congress to pass compulsory use licensing for all entities that collect data, or STFU.

pirateking• 14 years ago

I love Craigslist, and have used it for years successfully. It is the type of tool I love using the web for - simple, functional, and document based.

All of this anti-Craigslist sentiment makes me sad.

205guy• 14 years ago

I'm rather tired of all the sanctimonious, edgier-than-thou commenters and bloggers who keep saying CL has a "shitty UI." And that't not just because I like it (it's clean, simple, and easy to use). I totally agree that it could be improved, and maps do make it easier, but the CL interface never breaks or gets in the way the way an actual shitty UI does.

Also, I think a lot of complainers are not aware of what it takes to roll out UI design changes to hundreds of millions of users. Frankly, I'm not very knowlegeable myself, but I can stop and think about it for a second and imagine there are huge logistical issues (performance, browsers, etc.) and huge psychological issues (non-technical users, familiarity, etc.)

And then there's the whole question of whether CL's UI should be improved. There are clear benefits to having a simple UI that does not do everything for the user. When I used it to find housing near SF, I copy-pasted addresses to map them, and I did a little extra work, but I never found that CL was actually in my way. For neighborhoods and recommendations, I asked real people. When I looked for a car, I made a little spreadsheet to give weighted scores to the features I wanted--I did not go around whining that CL didn't do everything for me.

My impression is that CL wants to be a basic classified service. For whatever reason they don't want to morph into a specialized listing service, and I can understand and respect that. After all, the CL interface is not that much different from HN's.

PS: I've had this item open in my browser for maybe an hour or two--why does the Add Comment button turn into a "dead link" OMG such a shitty UI, if they won't fix it, I am justified in rehosting all the content on a better site.

jacoblyles6• 14 years ago

The millions of people who use padmapper every month seem to think it is a preferable experience to going on Craigslist, trying to figure out if Mountain View is a "Peninsula" or "South Bay" city, and then discovering the wonderful diversity of places that humans will call "Mountain View" one listing at a time.

aneth4• 14 years ago

If we are lucky, they will settle for PadMapper's assets - and use them.

awkward• 14 years ago

I think a lot of the work to put a quality UI on craigslist ignores something very important about user psychology - seeing your data that you willingly gave to one organization publicly available in the hands of another one is generally perceived as creepy. Apartment listings may be less sensitive than other kinds of data, but they're still personal, and some users may not want their listing showing up in different venues even if others will take whatever publicity they get.

Most programmers and designers have made peace with the idea that what's public on the internet is public for the whole internet, but I think most people perceive this kind of information leakage as a lack of control. I think that Craigslist, more than most companies, has a real understanding of this, and a lot of their restrictions that may seem arbitrary to entrepreneurs come out of it.

badclient• 14 years ago

This is the beginning of the end for CL. You can just sense by actions such as this what their survival strategy is. While legally they may win this battle, in the long run, I think CL is headed to deadpool in the next 5 years.

dredmorbius7• 14 years ago

My view on this is much as it was before:

- The Craigslist apartments listing interface really, really sucks.

- Padmapper's search interface is much, much better.

- CL almost certainly have legal recourse to control use of their data and trademarks, or at least make things miserable for PadMapper should they choose to do so. Which would put a crimp on PM's future growth prospects as a lawsuit magnet.

- CL undoubtedly add value to their listings by filtering (through community input) for misclassified and spam listings.

- I really wish the two organizations could reach an equitable compromise which preserves the PM interface concept. Licensed use. Buyout. Whatever.

- Barring that, CL are ripe for disruption. My read is that PM have enough mojo at this point to make it on their own by licensing listings from other sources and soliciting them on their own.

enduser987• 14 years ago

Ha. They need to sue Google and other search engines that provide caches. Good luck with that.

Second, it's not infromation that's protectable by copyright (at least not in the US). It's like the telephone book as others have said.

There's heaps of websites that mistakenly believe they have some copyrights to assert against users that harvest data. But it's not just websites. A longstanding, classic example of this sort of silly argument is WHOIS. The registries can't stand the thought of others getting the data. They claim bandwidth is an issue. Yet they won't provide (mirrored) bulk data, which would easily resolve any such bandwidth claims. They purport to "license" the right to do things with the data, yet they have no rights to grant to begin with. It is public data.

Then there's the "spam issue". As if email is somehow different from direct mail, and from telemarketing. Why don't we outlaw those practices?

Anyhow, again, it's public data: addresses and phone numbers. We call it the telephone book. If, e.g., a brokerage wants to have its summer interns do cold calling to solicit new institutional investors, the interns do not need a "license to use the telephone book". If someone listed in the phone directory does not want to be called, there's no law that says they have to be listed; they can use a nonlisted phone number.

People who list with CL presumably want their information to be found and to be presented in an appealing way. Maybe not exclusively on CL. Maybe CL should ask them what they would prefer.

slowpoison2• 14 years ago

I'm getting sick of the general attitude here. A majority of people seem to think that it's OK to copy user posting data from CL, because they are a monopoly. IE is cited as an example of a monopoly, thus anything is OK to take it down.

That attitude is horribly wrong. Agreed, CL is a monopoly. Agreed, they are holding back innovation. But, you don't disrupt a business (and build yours) by copying their data, especially illegally. Although, the legality of issue at hand is up in the air right now, the general attitude is a bit appalling.

What's required is a way for users to post their listings simultaneously at other properties. The content of the postings belongs to the user and they should be free to re-post it anywhere.

delackner• 14 years ago

The USER intent is to have their listing seen by as many people as possible. If the courts decide that the listing site can block access to such public listings they have been entrusted with, I don't know how the law needs to change, but the current legal situation is bad for the general public, bad for commerce, and bad for progress.

paulschreiber2• 14 years ago

If Craigslist spent as much on UI or API designers as they did on lawyers, we'd all be better off.

Craigslist Suing Padmapper

Related Stories