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Comment by ataggart | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

No they don't. They just have to check the stupid checbox that doesn't do anything because otherwise they can't post advertisment they wrote. I'd say cheking this checkbox is coerced. Also you may check it witout reading what's written next to it.

Posting to Craigslist isn't a Constitutional right. Don't agree with the terms? Don't post there. No one's coercing.

Let me know if you rent your next place without it.

I currently own, but my last place was rented in 2010 without Craigslist. It's entirely possible.

Possible != practical in all cases.

There's no Constitutional right to a practical apartment hunt, either.

There's also no constitutional right to uninstalling a browser and installing your own browser. That doesn't mean something isn't going wrong with the public's interests.

When a group can interfere with how you hunt for a place to live something is up. Where you live is pretty fundamental.

> When a group can interfere with how you hunt for a place to live something is up.

What entitled bullshit. People/companies do that all the time. Padmapper could've run out of money and shut themselves down - would you pursue a court injunction on the basis that they shouldn't be able to interfere with how you hunt for an apartment? How about if they changed the UI in a way you didn't like?

> What entitled bullshit.

Wanting the market to work isn't entitled BS. It's good civic thinking. Craigslist holding onto its incumbency, counter to the interests of the public is entitled BS.

> Padmapper could've run out of money and shut themselves down - would you pursue a court injunction on the basis that they shouldn't be able to interfere with how you hunt for an apartment? How about if they changed the UI in a way you didn't like?

The first would've been the market working as it should. Also, if Padmapper messes up its UI and goes out of business, then the market works as it should.

Craigslist holding onto its monopoly position is a broken market.

> Craigslist holding onto its monopoly position is a broken market.

This sounds more like whining than anything based in reality. Craigslist has a monopoly on apartment rent listings?

http://www.apartments.com/

http://www.apartmentguide.com/

http://www.zillow.com

http://www.apartmentfinder.com/

http://www.forrent.com/

http://www.apartmentsearch.com/

http://www.rent.com/

http://www.apartmentratings.com/

http://www.rentals.com/Apartments/

Yes. In as much as Microsoft had "competitors" but had as close to a monopoly position in its market to warrant action.

Pedant posturing aside, to those who have "skin in the game," namely those renting and renting-out property and paying real money for leases, Craigslist is the 800 lb gorilla in most markets.

They have a public interface. I'm using it without agreeing to anything. They can't make me agree by presenting me with checkbox. They can't prevent me from using their interface if I don't agree. On the other hand I can't make them actually publish the information I entered or keep them to their word on anything they declare. It's not what lawers like but that's how internet works.

> They can't make me agree by presenting me with checkbox. They can't prevent me from using their interface if I don't agree.

False. From the EFF: https://www.eff.org/wp/clicks-bind-ways-users-agree-online-t...

> Given the emphasis placed on a user’s assent, courts favor finding a binding agreement where the user engages in affirmative conduct acknowledging the terms of a TOS. For instance, a genuine clickwrap agreement, in which a service provider places a TOS just adjacent to or below a click-button (or check-box), has been held to be sufficient to indicate the user agreed to the listed terms. In these cases, requiring the user to click “I Agree,” after calling attention to the terms and affording the user an opportunity to review them, demonstrates the user agreed to the terms. However, courts generally do not require that you actually have read the terms, but just that you had reasonable notice and an opportunity to read them.

You talk about law. American law to be precise. I talk about physics. They can't even prove it was I that checked the checkbox.

Try using that argument in a court and they'll laugh.

Finding myself in american court in the second scenario in the list of preferable scenarios right after finding myself in third world country prison. So if I'm there I consider myself already gone regardless of any argumentation.

In other courts on the other hand in cases about copyright violations even if accuser provided IP address, logs clearly indicating defendants computer the case was dismissed because he still failed to indicate that it was in fact the defendant that downloaded and/or served the copyrighted file in question.

I'd say same way there's no possibility anyone could prove that it was I who checked the checkbox.

But please ignore me. I'm just venting.

I would bet that 99% of CL users not only never read this TOS, but they also do not care if padmapper copies their listings.

I've never read my credit card TOS, so I don't have to pay my bills right?

What does that have to do anything? The point is that users do not care if other companies copy their listing data (and aren't even aware of such a restriction).

How have you determined that every users listing on Padmapper doesn't care it has been scraped from CL and relisted? Did they contact every user and get their permission first?

It's not necessary for them to do so. It's incumbent upon CL to prove the infringement, not the other way around.

Exactly, ignorance of the law is never an excuse! THen they make more laws

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

Under the HN logic prevailing in this discussion, that would appear to be correct...

But like padmapper, you would be completely screwed if it turned into a lawsuit.

The notion that I am bound by whatever legalese someone happens to put on their publicly accessible website is absurd in the extreme; I am not the one checking the box to submit a post. CL is perfectly able to restrict read-access to those who agree to the terms, e.g., by requiring registration. That they choose not to is their choice, and the state should not be used as a substitute bludgeon whenever they dislike the unintended consequences.

Furthermore, the publicly-accessible data isn't being copied, it's being consumed. I may consume the data to find an apartment. Someone might consume the data to calculate the average market prices in a city. Padmapper consumes the data to generate locations on a map.

This makes no sense. You agree to the TOS when you post information to CL, not when you are just browsing for listings; that submitted information is what is bound by the TOS above. Also if you aren't the one checking the agree box, who is?

From what you've written above it sounds like you believe any contract between two parties is absurd in the extreme.

> The notion that I am bound by whatever legalese someone happens to put on their publicly accessible website is absurd in the extreme.

Well, if nothing else, the submitting users' copyright applies. CL has a license to use it however they like, you don't.

Imagine that Padmapper were released as an alternative web browser. As an end user, I have the right to consume CL's content. Do they have a right to tell me which web browser I can and cannot use?

Since CL offers their data freely to "the public", by what theory can they prevent the public from using their own chosen client browser to view it? Why should there be a distinction between software installed in my computer and a cloud-hosted application like Padmapper?

I believe that Padmapper, as an agent acting on behalf of its users, has every right to reformat the information originating on CL as long as it does not purposefully seek to cause confusion about the origin of the data (which they do not as they link to the source).

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.

You should read that link:

the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a compilation work such as a database must contain a minimum level of creativity in order to be protectable under the Copyright Act.

The Supreme Court (...) held that Rural's white pages are not entitled to copyright protection, since the white pages did not meet the statutory requirement for originality under 17 U.S.C. §102(a).

Cragslist is completely automated. There's absolutely no creativity involved.

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.

Unfortunately for them, "sweat of the brow" doesn't afford copyright protection in the US.

You're right, sweat of the brow is irrelevant, which is why it is irrelevant that their process is now automated. The copyrightable aspects are in the collection, selection, and presentation of data, which is not required by law to be performed manually.

It's relevant because it requires creativity; it's not automatically ruled out, but it makes it harder to claim.

In any case, Craigslist is completely unoriginal in its selection and arrangement of the data; the selection is "whatever people submit" and the arrangement is LIFO. I find it very hard to believe they'll be awarded copyright over it.

>Cragslist is completely automated. There's absolutely no creativity involved.

Whoa whoa whoa, the coding of the site didn't involve a species of creativity?

If you mean that the content of a posting didn't involve creativity on Craigslist's part, you'd be on firmer ground, but even there they made design decisions (however questionable...) about how to present it.

I said that in the context of the previous post, you can't read it in isolation.

The design decision are irrelevant, since Padmapper isn't copying those.

>I'd apply the same copyright principle as phone books

So would I—phone books are not subject to compilation copyright, because there's no editorial choice going on. That was settled in the _Feist_ case.

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.

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