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Comment by blantonl | Hacker News Reader

The uproar over this is ridiculous. Craigslist is free to choose who can consume their data.

If you choose to build a platform that is dependent on third-party data and APIs, then you choose to accept whatever choices those third parties make that could possibly affect your application.

The whole "craigslist doesn't innovate" argument is moot. If they were selling buggy whips at a million dollar revenue rate a month, someone out there would attempt to get in that same business, copy it, mimik it, resell it, etc.

Innovators create stuff that people want to copy or leach off of. Poseurs copy and leach off of innovators.

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Craigslist is free to choose who can consume their data.

That much is completely obvious; I don't think anyone is arguing that Craigslist don't have that right.

People are annoyed because shutting down PadMapper (without any effort to provide similar functionality) is a shitty thing to do. PadMapper was a useful service; now it is not useful. That is unfortunate.

Personally, it also seems hypocritical for Craigslist to claim that they just build what their users' want. I think it is hard to argue that shutting down PadMapper is consistent with that goal.

I may have a contrarian view, but Craigslist not only has the right to choose who can consume their data, but how and when. It also, has the right to make it available any which way it likes. The idea that PadMapper has any right to Craigslist postings because it is a better service is ridiculous; it's like me saying that I think your house looks unkept so I am going to move in.

Craigslist not only has the right to choose who can consume their data, but how and when. It also, has the right to make it available any which way it likes.

That is obvious, follows directly from copyright law, and is not in dispute. PadMapper does not have a right to use Craigslist's data [1], but Craigslist sending C&Ds to PadMapper and similar sites is still shitty behavior all the same.

[1] Outside of fair use and similar stuff, but that doesn't apply here.

It's not shitty, it's smart, why give your data to a potential competitor? Padmapper is obstrnsibly attempting to make money right? Why should CL let PM profit for CL data? Just because YOU like PM, doesn't mean that CL is being shitty. There's a reason CL is still on top.

As far as the UI -- that's over rated. Drudge is the top trafficked news site in the world and he hasn't changed anything since 1997. Content trumps UI.

Craiglist is breaking a service that's valuable for their users. That certainly is shitty. It may be legal, and it may be what an MBA wold tell them to do, but it is undeniably shitty.

> I don't think anyone is arguing that Craigslist don't have that right.

I most certainly am arguing that. Not only is the concept of ownership of information fundamentally mistaken in the first place (copying information doesn't deprive the original holder of anything), but even if you believe data is property, it's the property of the people who created it - not of Craigslist.

It is their property still. They gave Craiglist the right to use it. Padmapper is a 3rd party with no rights here.

Can I create a LinkedIn competitor and just scrape your profile information to put on my site? After all, its the same situation.

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