It's not "public data". Illustrating example: people can and do make different offers on Craigslist than they do in other channels.
So the text of a classified ad itself is indeed copyrightable, but the mere fact that a house at 123 Some Avenue is for rent for $1,000 per month is not. Having learned of that fact from a copyrighted work, and in the absence of an NDA or something similar, you are free to disseminate that fact as you like.
It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.
Neural net for CL postings, extract the facts, reformat for your own display...
The question is, will CL now take steps to make the data more "private" (eg, member only, even if free...etc) or will they take steps to re-introduce themselves into a critical step of actionable use (must login for contact details, etc). CL could start to look like an apartment broker, though, if they follow through with this latter approach.
So this is an interesting dynamic to watch how it plays out. It might aso still be interesting to use a-padmapper-like-service, even as a complement to CL service. If I just had to get 1-5 things its no problem. But sorting 200-400? to find 5 is a PITA, because wading CL is increasingly inneficient. Its a discovery issue.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/omonmigaleaafgpkgo...
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/01/clmapper-is-a-padmapper-alt...
I do believe that is exactly what search engines do. Are they breaking copyright?
This is not a simple question. Huge court cases have been fought over this. In general, things that get Google off the hook in these cases:
* Publishers have the ability to opt out of Google
* Where Google creates copies of information from other sites, those copies are provided to uses noncommercially (ie, they don't make more money when you use their cache).
* Google uses DMCA Safe Harbor to avoid liability, which again turns in part on Google honoring opt-out requests from publishers.
* Google's use of the data is transformative, an idea that in part turns on it not being a direct substitute for the original.
These are not generally arguments that bode well for PadMapper, which is effectively trying to compete with Craigslist using Craigslist data and a better interface. Publishers generally want Google to do things differently... but when push comes to shove, they also really want to be in Google's index. The same is not true for PadMapper.
Second, phone numbers are raw facts, but advertisements are not; every advertisement ever has been copyrighted, and a whole 11-figure industry depends on that.
Now CL has a de facto monopoly, but it's like many others in that the market has granted that status to a large extent. CL can afford to look frumpy because it has few competitors and a massive first-mover advantage. You could set up 'Cushman's list' tomorrow and you'd probably crash and burn without them lifting a finger to obstruct you. So CL's listings are more than mere facts, they're the expression of a commercial preference by advertisers. A better comparison owuld be with stock exchange data; (as far as I know) the copyright on that is watertight because it's partly an expression of member companies' desire to be listed on that exchange as opposed to one of the competing exchanges.
The above is just my hunch about the copyright claim, but I don't think 3taps can succeed with that argument. The antitrust claim, I have no idea - but it should be borne in mind that monopolies are not necessarily bad. Courts nowadays give great weight to consumer benefit rather than abstract rules, and CL delivers an awful lot of consumer benefit by being free for most and charging very modest fees to a small class of advertisers.