3Taps Files Countersuit, Says Craigslist Is Anticompetitive

http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/24/3taps-files-craigslist-countersuit-refutes-copyright-infringement-says-craigslist-is-anticompetitive/

by sbashyal • 14 years ago

53 61 14 years ago

techcrunch.com

res0nat0r4• 14 years ago

This is like scraping Amazons reviews since they are available via Google and claiming you can display that user submitted content how ever you like. I can't see 3Taps having much of any case here.

chii4• 14 years ago

I don't see how 3Taps is any different a client than google is. Now, i dont know enough details, so i m not saying 3tap has a case. But, if they scrape data off craigslist, not via their api (to which they agreed to abide by terms and conditions), then they _do_ seem to have a case!

simplesimpl35• 14 years ago

Is 3Taps different from Google simply because they show a map?

Maybe CL should have terms for their general website that say data can be scraped and cached but that it must appear in the cache either exactly as it does on CL, or with some things missing, but not with anything added (e.g. a map).

zackzackzack• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping#Legal_issues

Hard to say what will happen. They will sure as shit get sued, but what will happen is up in the air as far as I can tell. If I remember correctly, if you are somehow changing or making new content from the data, then it is protected under fair use somehow.

tiddchristopher3• 14 years ago

It's not at all like that. The interesting thing seems to be the claim that Craigslist posts lack creativity, which Amazon reviews certainly do have. 3Taps is claiming the posts can't be protected by copyright, because you can't copyright facts. I think their case has merit.

res0nat0r4• 14 years ago

Are 3Taps verifying by hand that every scraped post are only facts? I've seen some pretty creative CL posts. Also it's been mentioned that assemblages of facts can in fact be copyrighted. See the Farmers Almanac.

Karunamon• 14 years ago

My understanding was that, as the owner of a site, (even one that hosts mostly/completely content created by someone else), you get to dictate the terms on which any party accesses that site. It would be like if YouTube said that you may not access their site with anything but a web browser.

Strange that they went the copyright way, though. IANAL, but isn't accessing a service you've been explicitly forbidden to (via ToS or similar) a violation of the CFAA?

natrius3• 14 years ago

I don't know of any precedent that gives sites that accept user-generated content grounds to sue when their users' copyrights are violated. I would like to hear of one.

simplesimpl35• 14 years ago

Seconded.

Certainly this issue has come up before. Maybe the fact there is no precedent tells us something? Who would benefit from keeping the issue undecided?

pyre2• 14 years ago

If you're scraping user-submitted content by accessing (e.g.) CraigsList, then I would think that CraigsList could try and claim that it was unauthorized access of their systems.

awolf3• 14 years ago

I hope that 3Taps follows through. This countersuit may help set a clearer precedent for who owns the data posted on public forums and what third party developers should be allowed to do with it.

Earlier this year I was searching for an apartment in San Francisco. Craigslist was my only source for places to apply. The good apartments got snatched up pretty fast so I wanted a way to make sure I saw every listing that came through. The problem: there are easily 500 new listings added every day, and approximately 20% of these were re-posts of the same place. It's very difficult and draining, just trying to keep track of what you've already seen and where you left off since the last time you checked.

So I did what any self respecting iOS developer would do: I made an app. It worked pretty much like an email inbox. Each new listing was like a new message. Refreshing the feed was like checking your email. Reposts were marked. You could bookmark and store things. The app colored the message cells based on whether they were from the most recent import or not (i.e. the app keeps your place).

The best part? It worked pretty damn well. I gave it to a few other people via Test Flight and they were hooked as well.

So, again, I did what any self respecting iOS developer would do: I put the app on the App Store. I figured that since my app was exclusively a craigslist client - a tool to make using craigslist better - I might have a better chance of not incurring craigslist's wrath. I put it on sale for $3.99 (it's called Craigslist Commando, if you're curious) and hoped for the best.

The app did pretty well given that I did zero promotion for it. It was brining in around $30-40/day after Apple's cut. Unfortunately, my hopes for escaping craigslist's wrath did not pan out. I received a cease and desist letter from them two weeks ago. I'm still waiting on hearing back from them. They've gone silent on me after our initial contact in which they told me to expect a draft licensing agreement. I'm guessing they went silent because they have bigger things on their plate right now. I have opted to keep the app in the store during this time, but I'm not very optimistic that craigslist's licensing terms will be tenable.

All of this to say: I have a pony in this race. I respect craiglist's rights to do what they think is necessary to protect their business. However something about this just doesn't jive for me:

a) People go to craigslist and create content about some aspect of their lives. They, as the original authors of the content, post it to craiglist with the intention that the general public can see it.

b) Other people go to craigslist to view content posted to a public forum in hopes of finding something. This process is frustrating and difficult.

c) I create a tool that makes the process of finding something on craigslist less frustrating and difficult.

d) Craigslist threatens to sue me for creating the that tool. This despite the fact that I'm helping both: the original authors of the content who would like to have their posts seen by their target audience and, the viewers of the content by making the viewing process more efficient.

I suppose craigslist has these rights. But it just doesn't seem right.

res0nat0r4• 14 years ago

> a) People go to craigslist and create content about some aspect of their lives. They, as the original authors of the content, post it to craiglist with the intention that the general public can see it.

Craigslist users only agreed to have their content displayed on the Craigslist site, not on any other random site on the Internet who wants to relist their posting without the users explicit permission.

fusiongyro• 14 years ago

Yes, but it's definitely true that they understand that to mean public, and it's almost certainly true that they would rather have more eyes than fewer. It sucks that that isn't a legally compelling argument and this guy will wind up being shut down though.

awolf3• 14 years ago

I see what you're saying and that may technically be true.

I'm not really arguing the legality of the issue though. I'm just talking about the spirit of what the content authors were trying to accomplish which I believe is: have some random person on the internet see their post and, subsequently, arrive at some sort of mutually beneficial arrangement with that person.

simplesimpl35• 14 years ago

That was CL's big mistake. These sort of unreasonable licensing terms that users never read are exactly the kind courts refuse to enforce.

Maybe you just want CL to win? That's different from whether CL has a real chance of winning. This case is unlikely to go to trial. That's because CL has a lot to lose and 3Taps has very little to lose. Some believe the reason there are few lawsuits on these issues that are not settled out of court is because websites like CL are afraid of having a court decide on them. Why would they want to avoid having a court decide?

pyre2• 14 years ago

I think you're talking in two directions here.

'any other random site on the Internet' is hardly the same as a single-purpose (native) app for making CraigsList listings easier to parse. I'm sure that most of the random Internet sites might not even be attributing the data back to CraigsList.

When it comes to apps like this, all Craigslist has to do to compete is make their UI for browsing/tracking listing better. If their interface was better, then people wouldn't feel the need to pay ~$3 for a separate app to browser their listings.

mattmanser• 14 years ago

I fundamentally disagree.

The users know CL is sharing it with the world and that's what the users expect. As the article says, CL is happy for search engines to access these. Just obviously not search engines that they don't like.

You don't get to pick and choose who accesses your website unless you put a password up. And if the content's not copyrightable...

Avitas2• 14 years ago

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 understand that others may disagree. But, I suspect that my expectation of non-propagation of material is the default expectation for many or most sites that accept user submitted material.

If CL is somehow forced to let others scrape their content, I would welcome an option to turn on a switch that will block/hide/protect the material I contribute from external entities. On second thought, I would rather have the do not share option be the default and let me opt in to sharing everything always, share by material classification or one post at a time.

simplesimpl35• 14 years ago

People should post their cease and desist letters from CL so others can see. I doubt you were the only person to receive one. Sometime when something doesn't seem right, it's because it isn't.

fbpcm• 14 years ago

I also received a C&D two weeks ago via email and FedEx for my craigslist interfacing iOS app. I also got an offer for a license but haven't heard anything since Thursday.

awolf3• 14 years ago

Hey, could you email me? hi@adamawolf.com

Us little guys need to stick together ;).

ceejayoz• 14 years ago

> it's called Craigslist Commando

Issues over content ownership aside, calling it that is a pretty clear trademark violation.

naner• 14 years ago

You are not entitled to scrape content from other sites, even if they contain publicly submitted data. I do support this sort of thing in the hacker spirit (as long as you aren't being too agressive) but selling an application using these techniques is downright unethical.

You have zero control over what you are selling to people. They don't know that you aren't using an offical means to get the data and the application could stop working at any time. And if you were scraping via the client (as opposed to collating data on a server of your own) you also put your customers in a position where they might be violating the site's TOS and risk reprecussions (ip ban, etc).

jcampbell12• 14 years ago

> You are not entitled to scrape content from other sites, even if they contain publicly submitted data.

Isn't this Google's business model? They take snapshots of the public web and show organized and relevant snippets. Last time I checked, they never asked me for permission.

onetwothreefour• 14 years ago

I'm as much about free access to data as anyone, but holy shit do you have a warped view of the world.

Craigslist doesn't have to pay money to run their company and users don't have to use Craigslist.

But because Craigslist does and the users do, doesn't give anyone the right to scrape this data. The individual user owns their content, but Craigslist owns and runs the servers and access to this data for third parties is not a right -- it's a biz dev deal or partnership.

If the world worked how you want it to, no one would run any services because the load generated from scrapers would outweigh real user usage by a factor of 100x. And your competitors and parasitic freeloaders would just DoS you into monetary ruin.

You're not entitled to anything, and Craigslist doesn't owe you a business model.

TL:DR: This lawsuit is going straight into the trash.

ujeezy• 14 years ago

Direct link to the counterclaim: http://3taps.com/papers/3taps-answer-counterclaim.pdf

As a developer who received a C&D from Craigslist for a pretty innocuous app (seriously, it was built in a weekend), I'm glad to see someone test Craigslist's legal position in court.

At the very least, I hope it will expose that Craigslist is not just a happy, hippy-infused neighborhood listserve like many seem to think; rather, like most other companies, it actually goes to great lengths to quash threats to its very profitable business.

ghshephard2• 14 years ago

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 people, as well as engineer their Ops environment to handle additional load), but, I have to believe their is some way of simultaneously serving their community, providing a rapid response, as well as keeping their cost and overhead down while at the same time slapping a somewhat more elegant GUI and Search Interface.

mratzloff3• 14 years ago

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.

ghshephard2• 14 years ago

Well, they are also concerned about (A) Increasing their overhead, and (B) screwing up their uptime by introducing complexity (requiring even more investment in Ops) and finally (C) slowing down their responsiveness (once again, requiring investment in Ops, and Hardware, and engineering to get back that speed)

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.

graue• 14 years ago

I read the core of 3taps' counterclaim — pages 25-30 — and I recommend it. It's a good read.

Specifics of 3taps' scraping aside, I'm starting to see that this is a particular case of a general problem that also applies to Twitter, with its recent API changes. They and Craigslist each control access to an extremely large and growing volume of user-generated content that people post there with the intention of making public. Users post that content to Craigslist/Twitter primarily because each is the largest website of its type. And both sites are, increasingly, trying to preserve their control by restricting third-party access to the UGC inside them, at the cost of reduced innovation.

It's worth dwelling on the fact that large, powerful corporations can be built off the backs of user-generated content in this way. What do you do when a service like this adds a term in their TOU that you don't like? When their web UI is lacking basic functionality? Runs really slow? Doesn't work in your favorite browser? In any of these cases, you hit a big roadblock, because you don't really have a choice. The content is on Craigslist/Twitter — even though these companies did not create it.

This problem seems to be one that will recur over and over on the internet. I can see three main avenues to fight it:

1. Technological — Create decentralized services that are competitive with, and somehow eventually overtake, the centralized ones. This is what StatusNet, Tent.io and several other efforts are trying to do in the social networking space. But this is hard. Decentralization makes it much more complicated to even build a working service at all, let alone one with a consistent, smooth and intuitive user experience. And success would result in less profit, compared to solving the much easier problem of building a successful centralized service. So developers who could pull this off are strongly incentivized not to.

2. Organizational — Start nonprofit organizations that are committed to interoperability and innovation in their bylaws, and have them run centralized services. This has been done successfully at least once: Wikipedia, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Their nonprofit status doesn't mean everyone is happy with their management, or that Wikipedia is perfect. But they provide full data dumps, and the content is under a free license, and their Statement of Purpose (https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_by...) would make it hard to justify changing that. So, no matter what, you can always innovate with content on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia was the first site of its kind, so it got big the same way major commercial sites did — by having the right idea and execution at the right time. It would be hard to replicate that success in 2012 by creating a nonprofit-owned Twitter clone. But now that Wikipedia is established, it seems to work.

3. Legal — Just as there are privacy protections in the law (moreso in the EU than the US), so could there be regulatory requirements for web services over a certain size to allow some degree of interoperability.

If we don't find some kind of solution, I imagine that in 5 or 10 years, large incumbent internet sites like Twitter, Craigslist and heck, let's throw Facebook in there as well, could be the new RIAA and MPAA, using the aggregate value of their content to bludgeon competitors into submission and restrict innovation, to the detriment of the public, except that in this case, it's that very public that created the content enabling these companies to bully others in the first place. Craigslist v. 3Taps is not the end of this.

kefs• 14 years ago

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.

overcyn• 14 years ago

Why not? The primary question here is whether 3taps is engaging in copyright infringement as Craigslist claims.

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?

creat05• 14 years ago

If Craigslist can assert copyright protection over classified ads and can make people grant exclusive licenses to the ads they submit, then why didn't newspapers do this before the web? Shouldn't there be a nice line of precedent for Craigslist to cite in its Complaint?

I think those web developers who actually think they "own" UGC may be in for a rude awakening if something like this ever goes to trial. As a UGC site they are providing access, and that's all. There may soon come a day when users will not need third party websites in order to provide access to data they want to make public. Web developers should consider themselves lucky if they are running a UGC site and managing to make people believe they, not the users, own the content. Cease and desist letters alleging copyright infringement claims that have no legal basis (where is the case law that says anyone can copyright classified ads?) will only work for so long.

systemtrigger• 14 years ago

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?

creat05• 14 years ago

Why do you need to hotlink? What is one more click?

    <img src="http://example.com/1.jpg">Photo</a>

No.

    <a href="http://example.com/1.jpg">Photo</a>

Yes.

3Taps Files Countersuit, Says Craigslist Is Anticompetitive

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