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Comment by soup10 | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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.

> It is obvious that smaller sites like PadMapper want to slowly try and chip away at Craiglist content

It's not Craigslist's content. It's our content, the general public's. Craigslist is just a caretaker. Right now, it's a caretaker acting in its own interests against the public's.

The general public gave it to Craigslist under readily available terms. The general public is free to also give it to your service, but that's up to them.

This is disingenuous. Craigslist isn't doing the public's will. It's just taking advantage of public apathy. (Much like Microsoft did with the browser wars.)

Yes you did post some facts about your listing to CL, it is also well within Craigslists right to allow others to copy it or not. Just because you supplied the data to CL doesn't mean you can dictate to them how they should run their business.

A copyright clause designed to allow Craigslist to stop abuse shouldn't be used to squash competitors. That's not dictating "how they should run their business." That's telling them to stop being selfish.

How are they trying to squash competition? Padmapper isn't free to have users submit their listings to their own website?

> How are they trying to squash competition?

Again, disingenuous. CL has the network effect. That's like Microsoft saying, Users are free to install their own browsers. Their current actions are only to preserve that, not to squash abuses. (Which is what they usually do with the power of their TOU.)

So Apple should stop selling iPhones because it has a dominant position in the marketplace because it is the device most preferred by buyers?

Apple's network effect or market position clearly doesn't make other phones and devices a non-starter. Craiglist's network effect and market position clearly makes other housing listing sites a non-starter.

Big difference.

It also does not mean that CL has any obligation to provide that data to another for free. If you want the data in multiple locations, post it to those other locations.

The purpose of CL is to provide data for free. Why should they care how that data is packaged, so long as this packaging is not abusive, but actually beneficial?

The real reason: Craigslist wants to hold onto their monopoly position.

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.

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