Craigslist begins to roll out PadMapper-like map view for apartment listings | Hacker News Reader

Craigslist begins to roll out PadMapper-like map view for apartment listings

venturebeat.com

31 pointsnthitz53 comments

Moral of the story, yet again, ad infinitum: don't waste your time watering somebody's else's garden. Yes it's the Internet and technically data is practically almost free to reproduce, but this doesn't imply a trouble-free right to steal your neighbour's database and proclaim your 100 line Javascript hack a startup. Borrowing content like that only works when you have lawyers, cash, and an excess of testosterone or stupidity (see also: YouTube)

This applies to business in general. If you're idea can be trivially reproduced by a semi-competent competitor, then you will find yourself in a heap of trouble once you have any measure of success.

Wait, are you arguing YouTube is an unworthy hack? They have got to have a pretty big infrastructure to manage and re-encode all that video.

Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the early history of YouTube

I'm actually not. Any good reads you know of?

Could do worse than leafing through here (perhaps change date range to cover 2005): https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=uk&tbm=nws...

More specifically, if you're infringing something, it should be to gain momentum or some other asset that you can use once your ability to infringe goes away, which it will if/when you become successful.

Isn't that sort of a horrible, morally bankrupt thing to say?

If there is no better reason to infringe than you want to make some profit, then you're just a scumbag. I'd hope there was some other moral stance you are taking before you infringe.

YouTubers will surely say the ends justify the means, that the TV monopoly needed disruption, and it was good for consumers to break down traditional ideas about copyrights. Maybe that's just a thin veneer on greed, but it's a start at least.

If you can make something of value that persists after you stop infringing, then I would say it's worth it to the world. For example, YouTube is a great asset to the world that would not exist without early infringement. But that's a moral calculus you have to do for yourself.

..and under no circumstance consider theft an actual strategy. AFAIK it only worked for YouTube due to the virginal DMCA still receiving initial court testing, and probably only then due also to the company's prolonged ability to afford legal representation.

While I agree about the garden-watering/sharecropping, "steal" is a pretty tenuous description of what Padmapper was doing, and to the extent it applies, any kind of link database with a digest of associated content is also theft.

By making CLMapper I feel partially responsible for motivating CraigsList to improve user experience. Also, CLMapper is 1330 lines of javascript not 100 and you were probably talking about PadMapper anyway. ;)

I was kind of hoping craigslist was cooking up something awesome, and waiting for the product to be fully polished and "magical, revolutionary" before launching it. unfortunately, this just feels like they rushed out of the door with the first thing they could mash up. specifically, two shortcomings: 1. as far as i can tell, it doesn't show you what listings you've already clicked on, unlike every map based apartment search out there 2. it doesn't appear to be loading the data as you scroll around the map - it loads it all at once up front. of course it's nice that you don't have to wait for it to load as you scroll, but that means there's an upper bound to the number of listings you can search through, and just goes to show how incomplete their implementation is. i'm guessing that's why it isn't offered in NY yet - too many listings to serve all at once

You just used "fully polished", "magical" and "revolutionary" in the same sentence as craigslist. There's no precedent for any of those adjectives.

So, should PadMapper countersue Craigslist for anti-competitive behavior?

I think so, but I have a vindictive streak.

Under exactly what theory of law would PadMapper be able to file such a suit?

Late edit: By claiming Craigslist is a monopoly.

3taps did countersue Craigslist for anti-competitive behavior, and the filing is well worth a read.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/24/3taps-files-craigslist-coun...

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4567713

I doubt PadMapper will join the suit, though.

Protecting what is yours is not anti-competitive

But what Craigslist claims is theirs is actually other people's data. Although this protection isn't currently enshrined in U.S. law, I'd like to think my data belongs to me.

Nicely done. I never had any problems with Craigslist on HousingMaps. In fact, they were always quite helpful, e.g. unblocking my IP from their scraper list every year or so.

CL have eyeballs, content and audience. So I'm not surprised that they are doing this. They'll also come victorious. Content is king. As always!

I was almost certain[1] that Craigslist was working on PadMapper like interface and it was the reason they sued. They should have done the right thing and hire/buy one person company PadMapper.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4149263

I don't see why the "right" thing would be to reward someone for breaking your ToS and stealing your database as a means of creating a potential competitor to your business.

On top of that, even if PadMapper had not been slimy, I don't see why it's "right" to pay a sum for something you're perfectly capable of building yourself for less time, money, effort, and headache than what an acquisition would cost.

No, of course, it's not like Craigslist has done some damage to PadMapper and now needs to buy them as recompense or anything. But buying them would be the... gallant thing to do?

That is, it isn't so much what Craigslist "needs" to do to be in the right, here, but it's what they could do to be in the very right. To be better than any other random classifieds company, to generate viral PR, to be something you'd be happy to say you use, etc.

I think it would be wrong to reward the PadMapper author's ethically questionable behavior.

Being gallant doesn't make you better than other random classifieds companies. It makes you more gallant. That might be worth something to a few users, but it doesn't seem like the majority care.

1. No one needs to agree to a ToS to read CL data.

2. One cannot "steal" publicly accessible data.

3. A search interface with resulting links to the relevant post on CL; if PadMapper was a "competitor" then so is google.

This has been asked and answered numerous times here, lets not have to go over this again. PadMapper was using CL data without a license, they are not 'reading it' they are republishing it in their own app.

But that data doesn't belong to Craigslist. To the extent it's copyrightable at all, it belongs to the user who posted each ad. And even then, PadMapper only reproduced a minimal number of facts on its website: price, location, subject line, number of bedrooms, whether cats/dogs are okay. They linked to CL for the full ad, so no copyright was infringed.

> lets not have to go over this again

Well, since you've clearly been over this more carefully than most of us, maybe you could be troubled just a bit to elaborate on these questions one more time:

* Is it clear that the kind of data that craigslist published can in fact be "owned"? Because no matter what their terms claim, the legal analyses I've read aren't positively conclusive.

* Why is what Padmapper did any different than a search engine? Contrary to some assertions, PadMapper was not republishing listings wholesale -- they published digests (making the ownership issue even less tenable) along with hyperlinks, which sounds a lot like a search engine to me (pretty much what they are). Or even a typical anchor tag itself: the contents of such a tag are generally a digest, the attribute presents the hypertext.

* If you agree these activities are something people shouldn't be able to do without permission, are you fine with a web where search indexing or even linking is essentially by agreement only? This is not an academic question, btw -- there have been lawsuits over linking: http://www.salon.com/1999/08/12/deep_links/

I'm speculating here, but perhaps this was the root of CL suing PadMapper in the first place.

They've been looking for a front-end developer with "integrated mapping technology" experience since early this year, so not a completely unreasonable guess.

http://www.craigslist.org/about/craigslist_is_hiring

You think they had this functionality in the works before PadMapper?

It certinaly doesn't look good for CL, IMO, if they only started working on it after PadMapper started gaining momentum.

It's an interesting question.

Only if by "look[ing] good", you mean it changes your opinion of them. From most perspectives it doesn't really matter when they decided to move in this direction since it's their data. It's the same thing we've seen over and over, where a small guys builds on someone else's platform, and the platform provider uses their inherent advantages to take over.

IMO = in my opinion

How did you get your numbers for your conclusion about "most perspectives"? That is not just an opinion, correct? Otherwise you might have used words like "I think" or "in my opinion".

Another related conclusion I'm curious about is "their data" (i.e. the data users uploaded is now CL's data). That is not just an opinion, correct? When I search for a clear answer on that issue, I can't find one. I'd love to see some clear guidance on this question.

Platform providers do sometimes use their advantages unfairly. But platforms cannot succeed without some level of symbiosis between those who provide them and those who use them. This is only my opinion. However I have seen others say much the same thing.

Sorry, misinterpreted the "IMO".

They needn't have sued. If their implementation was as good as padmapper or better, then padmapper would've lost their audience anyway.

We could argue whether it is good or bad for platforms to copy a feature and push services like padmapper out, but it is still their platform. But a big guy suing a small guy, especially when he was making the service better definitely looks like bullying.

Love this headline. For those unaware, Craigslist is suing PadMapper for using their data.

> Craigslist is suing 3Taps for using Google's Data.

I would feel bad for the PadMapper maintainer, except for the fact that he seemed so self-entitled here in the threads.

Really? He seemed very humble to me and consistently expressed a sincere wish to come to an agreement with Craigslist. The impression I got was that CL couldn't possibly have sued a nicer guy.

Except it sucks compared to PadMapper.

Actually its pretty good - solves 90% of the use cases for me. And it feels much faster than padmapper.

Hope padmapper comes up victorious, CL is being a huge bully it seems.

How are they being a bully? It's their service. If they want to kick someone off it and develop a competitor, that's their prerogative.

This is just another example of why you shouldn't base your startup on someone else's product. If you're successful, they'll develop a competitor and use their position to push you out.

>How are they being a bully? It's their service. If they want to kick someone off it and develop a competitor, that's their prerogative.

So? They're still being a bully. Just because you're acting within the confines of the law and your rights doesn't necessarily mean you aren't being a dick about it.

So CL are bullies for dictating what people can do with their data?

The idea that Craigslist owns their posts is ridiculous. It may be true from a legal point of view, but from a moral point of view they're just the custodian of that data for the people posting it, and they should act as such.

If Craigslist doesn't own the posts, then that means the users own their own posts, and you don't have their permission to re-use their posts.

This just puts you back where you started.

Not really - the users own the posts and put them up in order to get publicity. It's like claiming 'I republished your classified ad for you in 6 papers' is a problem - virtually every classified ad would be pleased that they had more coverage.

I don't want my classified ads republished because I've chosen to publish the advertisement in places that target specific types of people.

It's incredibly naive to assume you know best.

We have our job ads republished by job sites with user bases that are far outside what we're interested in, and it results in a massive waste of our time in filtering those candidates.

There is no morality in business. You can try to be as philosophical as you like about it, but it's all your imagination that morals play any role at all. In fact, your morals are entirely your own and only yours.

When you look at how badly CL's site has stagnated, and what a poor view most apartment searchers have of it, and then you look at the fact that nearly everyone uses it anyway, it's obvious we're dealing with a monopolist. No one who has real competition can get away with keeping their service that shitty.

Apologies for resorting to profanity, but I find Craigslist's behavior completely odious and am continually disappointed to see so many on HN defending them. For a more articulate argument, see 3taps' claims of anticompetitive behavior: http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/24/3taps-files-craigslist-coun..., scribd document at the bottom, pages 25-30.

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