I kind of feel bad for Craigslist. Everyone is attacking them for wanting to hold onto their data. I don't think that they should be obligated to let just anyone scrape it
In what way is it "their data" if they release it to the public? The law is pretty clear about this--facts can't be copyrighted. They don't own the facts. They don't own the bits that padmapper is referencing. All they own is the db records for the posts that originated the information.
Imagine if they had a CL user meetup in public somewhere, and then they charged users to use a megaphone to announce that they were selling something. Someone writes down the information and has their own meetup for people who couldn't make it to the free, public CL meetup. Whats the difference between that and what padmapper is doing, except that padmapper is getting the information second hand?
If CL thinks they have a right to their data, they should be suing google should they?
I don't get where you came up with that. It wasn't in the article at all.
While it is true that "facts can't be copyrighted", it's unclear that Craigslist listings qualify as facts in the relevant sense. (The singles listings, for example, surely don't.)
> Someone writes down the information and has their own meetup for people who couldn't make it to the free, public CL meetup. Whats the difference between that and what padmapper is doing, except that padmapper is getting the information second hand?
Getting the information second-hand seems fairly significant.
Don't get me wrong - I think that craigslist should be disrupted, but I don't think that you should just do the easy parts.
Note that the NYT has a dog in this fight - Craigslist has "disrupted" the newspaper biz.
I meant to suggest that that made it even less significant. The information is already widely disseminated across multiple platforms because its public information. Sure, everyone knows that CL is the original source for the information, but that doesn't meant that only people they say can have the information should have the information. Its public, broadcasted information.
Sure, they can put something on their website along the lines of "You're not allowed to distribute this information", but why does that have any weight if they don't own the information?
Padmapper only publishes the relavant facts from the listing. Even if the whole text contains copyrightable material (some prose describing the house maybe), they don't copy the whole text just the facts.
This apartment is available for rent here, it has 4 bedrooms etc...
They are the IE6 of classified ads. And just like IE6 they are holding back innovation.
And sloppy journalism. Why won't anyone ask PadMapper why they decided against? This is like half of a linkbait article. The fact that CL offered paid access was in last week's HN stories. I bet there's a breathless follow-up article with that fact, trolling for additional page views.