Craigslist Suing Padmapper(gigaom.com)
gigaom.com
Craigslist Suing Padmapper
http://gigaom.com/2012/07/24/craigslist-sues-competitor-padmapper-over-listings/
449 comments
The tone in this article is unbelievable.
>The case raises questions over whether Craigslist is stifling innovation or simply protecting its data
There is no question. Craigslist isn't stopping Padmapper from being built, its stopping Padmapper from using Craigslist data. The continuous attempts to reframe Craigslist's actions as an attempt to stifle innovation seem almost surreal. I just can't understand how a community of professionals could support Padmapper in this.
>The case raises questions over whether Craigslist is stifling innovation or simply protecting its data
There is no question. Craigslist isn't stopping Padmapper from being built, its stopping Padmapper from using Craigslist data. The continuous attempts to reframe Craigslist's actions as an attempt to stifle innovation seem almost surreal. I just can't understand how a community of professionals could support Padmapper in this.
"(Craigslist) said it offered a license that would have allowed PadMapper to use its data on mobile applications but that the competitor did not accept the terms."
But on the other hand, "users and developers are exasperated with Craigslist’s insistence on preserving an outdated interface and design."
I don't know the legal merits of either party's position, but from an ethical perspective, I tend to side with Craigslist here. Dissatisfaction with a commercial site's UI is not just cause for using their data without permission, particularly if they had made an effort to offer a licensing agreement, whatever the terms might have been.
But on the other hand, "users and developers are exasperated with Craigslist’s insistence on preserving an outdated interface and design."
I don't know the legal merits of either party's position, but from an ethical perspective, I tend to side with Craigslist here. Dissatisfaction with a commercial site's UI is not just cause for using their data without permission, particularly if they had made an effort to offer a licensing agreement, whatever the terms might have been.
My logical brain says that suing Padmapper is perfectly reasonable. My emotional brain is crying at the idea of using raw Craigslist ads to find an apartment the next time I move to a new city.
I move to a new city every year, usually on short notice, and I often go into the process of apartment hunting with no knowledge of local neighborhoods, the public transportation system, or general geography. Without Padmapper, the process would be unbearable.
I move to a new city every year, usually on short notice, and I often go into the process of apartment hunting with no knowledge of local neighborhoods, the public transportation system, or general geography. Without Padmapper, the process would be unbearable.
This isn't surprising of course, it is their data after all, but it brings up the 'easy problem' / 'hard problem' (E/H-P) conundrum quite nicely.
The conundrum is that it is 'easy' to take an existing, quality data source, and re-skin it for broader market appeal. This is something that Craigslist should be doing but perhaps through poor management are not. It is 'hard' to take a conceptual model of skinning and building a quality data source behind it.
As I said elsewhere, the PadMapper guys might have taken this to Craigslist and said "Look what we can do with your data, lets make happy music together." and then debated the terms. Or they could take their UX to the venture capital world and say "Look at this cool product we could build if we had access to a database with Craig list's quality" and debate cap tables and dilution (assuming they got to that stage of a term sheet).
But they chose the third route, "Lets see how long we can get away with this..." and the timer on that just ran out.
Sadly, this third path makes the first two paths much harder. Craigslist already sees them as the 'enemy' and VCs will see them as a team that makes poor choices. Both views make it harder (but certainly not impossible) to consummate a deal. However, from the blog and from previous postings here it seems they made those choices with their eyes open.
The conundrum is that it is 'easy' to take an existing, quality data source, and re-skin it for broader market appeal. This is something that Craigslist should be doing but perhaps through poor management are not. It is 'hard' to take a conceptual model of skinning and building a quality data source behind it.
As I said elsewhere, the PadMapper guys might have taken this to Craigslist and said "Look what we can do with your data, lets make happy music together." and then debated the terms. Or they could take their UX to the venture capital world and say "Look at this cool product we could build if we had access to a database with Craig list's quality" and debate cap tables and dilution (assuming they got to that stage of a term sheet).
But they chose the third route, "Lets see how long we can get away with this..." and the timer on that just ran out.
Sadly, this third path makes the first two paths much harder. Craigslist already sees them as the 'enemy' and VCs will see them as a team that makes poor choices. Both views make it harder (but certainly not impossible) to consummate a deal. However, from the blog and from previous postings here it seems they made those choices with their eyes open.
I find this sort of thing very frustrating to read:
"The search tool is antiquated, the images are poor or nonexistent, locations of listings are hardly dependable, and you can forget about an integrated way to save anything for later reference. There is a litany of shortcomings that come with the Craigslist apartment search; they are many and they are painful..."
If you don't like the site, don't like the UI, and can't stand the UX, then don't use the site. Nobody is forcing you to search for an apartment on CL. Nobody is forcing owners to list apartments on CL.
And so now we get to the meat ...
"...Your site is chock-full of data I need..."
Ahh...data you NEED.
So here's the thing. If you truly need the data, then you need Craigslist and you have an obligation to use it the way they (and only they) want you to use it. If you don't like the way they want you to use it, there are several choices:
* Go work for them and convince them to improve it. * Build a better mousetrap.
The former probably won't succeed, so the latter seems to be the way to go.
Look, there's nothing preventing landlords from listing their apartments on Craigslist AND your new Craigslist replacement/improvement. They're not locked in. If they were, that would be a whole different discussion - then we can talk about anti-competitive, innovation-stifling behavior. But that's not the case - the only reason people list apartments on CL is because it works. Despite the bad UI. Hence the reason CL hasn't changed it.
So it's the job of some enterprising entrepreneur not only ro build a better mousetrap, but convince people to use it. Until that happens, as much as I too dislike the Craigslist UI, I can't say I support PadMapper on this one.
"The search tool is antiquated, the images are poor or nonexistent, locations of listings are hardly dependable, and you can forget about an integrated way to save anything for later reference. There is a litany of shortcomings that come with the Craigslist apartment search; they are many and they are painful..."
If you don't like the site, don't like the UI, and can't stand the UX, then don't use the site. Nobody is forcing you to search for an apartment on CL. Nobody is forcing owners to list apartments on CL.
And so now we get to the meat ...
"...Your site is chock-full of data I need..."
Ahh...data you NEED.
So here's the thing. If you truly need the data, then you need Craigslist and you have an obligation to use it the way they (and only they) want you to use it. If you don't like the way they want you to use it, there are several choices:
* Go work for them and convince them to improve it. * Build a better mousetrap.
The former probably won't succeed, so the latter seems to be the way to go.
Look, there's nothing preventing landlords from listing their apartments on Craigslist AND your new Craigslist replacement/improvement. They're not locked in. If they were, that would be a whole different discussion - then we can talk about anti-competitive, innovation-stifling behavior. But that's not the case - the only reason people list apartments on CL is because it works. Despite the bad UI. Hence the reason CL hasn't changed it.
So it's the job of some enterprising entrepreneur not only ro build a better mousetrap, but convince people to use it. Until that happens, as much as I too dislike the Craigslist UI, I can't say I support PadMapper on this one.
Here's a nugget from the article which I didn't hear anything about in the previous Padmapper postings and chat here on HN:
"The company said it offered a license that would have allowed PadMapper to use its data on mobile applications but that the competitor did not accept the terms."
"The company said it offered a license that would have allowed PadMapper to use its data on mobile applications but that the competitor did not accept the terms."
I can't say that I'm that surprised; Padmapper wrote a whole blog post about how they were adding Craigslist support back to their site after being sent a C&D by Craigslist.
It's a shame for the guy behind Padmapper, but hopefully there'll be a lesson learnt about knowing which fights are worth picking versus knowing when to move on.
Somehow Google managed to overcome Yahoo and Altavista without scraping their data. And look at something like GumTree in the UK, which has always been miles ahead of Craigslist - no first mover advantage taken up there. Plus, GumTree's design has been equally woeful over the years.
It's a shame for the guy behind Padmapper, but hopefully there'll be a lesson learnt about knowing which fights are worth picking versus knowing when to move on.
Somehow Google managed to overcome Yahoo and Altavista without scraping their data. And look at something like GumTree in the UK, which has always been miles ahead of Craigslist - no first mover advantage taken up there. Plus, GumTree's design has been equally woeful over the years.
"You're not wrong, [Craigslist], you're just an asshole."
I don't know who's legally right, but I've got no sympathy for Craigslist. They've got a monopoly on the data (whether right or wrong) and refuse to either build a decent UI for consumers or let other people do so.
That sounds bad, but I think you can't know how infuriating it really is until you've tried to find housing in a town where CL is the only real option and where demand far exceeds supply (where you spend many, many hours on the effort because of intense demand-side competition).
I don't know who's legally right, but I've got no sympathy for Craigslist. They've got a monopoly on the data (whether right or wrong) and refuse to either build a decent UI for consumers or let other people do so.
That sounds bad, but I think you can't know how infuriating it really is until you've tried to find housing in a town where CL is the only real option and where demand far exceeds supply (where you spend many, many hours on the effort because of intense demand-side competition).
Just because you don't like the interface, does not give you license to steal their data. I think HN is fairly ugly, but that doesn't mean I have a right to scrape the site in order to reproduce a slightly better looking, for-profit clone. At least not without PG's express permission.
Yahoo search would be a hell of a lot better if they could just scrape results from Google, but thankfully they lack the misguided sense of entitlement that Padmapper seems to suffer from.
Yahoo search would be a hell of a lot better if they could just scrape results from Google, but thankfully they lack the misguided sense of entitlement that Padmapper seems to suffer from.
> The lawsuit raises questions about who should be able to use the vast amount of user-created data hosted on a site like Craigslist.
No, it really doesn't. This isn't going to be a long, exciting case challenging the underpinnings of copyright law and server terms of services. Padmapper isn't that company.
No, it really doesn't. This isn't going to be a long, exciting case challenging the underpinnings of copyright law and server terms of services. Padmapper isn't that company.
Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4218714
Eric, everybody saw this coming.
Eric, everybody saw this coming.
Commenters here make this sound like an open and shut case in favor of Craigslist. IANAL, so could someone explain why Google's index of material covered by copyright is ok and PadMapper's is not?
Who didn't see this coming? I almost feel bad for Padmapper, but not really, because they should have known better.
When you can't beat them, sue them into the ground.
Craigslist is one of the poorest user experiences around and succeeds only because people insist on using it. The alternatives somehow manage to be even more spectacularly useless by over-designing their apps and cluttering them up with junk.
Padmapper is one of the few that does what they're supposed to do, and it's not even an optimal implementation of this sort of thing.
Craigslist is one of the poorest user experiences around and succeeds only because people insist on using it. The alternatives somehow manage to be even more spectacularly useless by over-designing their apps and cluttering them up with junk.
Padmapper is one of the few that does what they're supposed to do, and it's not even an optimal implementation of this sort of thing.
Heartbreaking.
Padmapper is the best apartment rental interface out there. The author has been single handedly working on this for 3-4 years and constantly improving his system.
Legally he might not have been in the right but we should be helping him out not uselessly debating and casting judgement.
If theres anyone who exmplifies the true spirit of Hacker News it would be the author of PadMapper.
Padmapper is the best apartment rental interface out there. The author has been single handedly working on this for 3-4 years and constantly improving his system.
Legally he might not have been in the right but we should be helping him out not uselessly debating and casting judgement.
If theres anyone who exmplifies the true spirit of Hacker News it would be the author of PadMapper.
Padmapper ought to do a better job of leveraging this publicity. Apartment season is in full swing in college towns across the country and they need to push really hard to get the word out about Padlister: in particular, the fact that it will cross-post to Craigslist automatically (so you don't lose any viewers). This doesn't matter for realtors - they already have systems to autospam Craiglist. But it does matter to self-listers. They could get good traction targeting roommate listers and seekers as a way to build organic listings and eyeballs. Create a viral campaign. I would share it, and I know plenty of other people who would because Padmapper has made such a difference.
http://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-anyone-built-any-products-on-...
In particular, read the comments by Craig himself. Funny how these things change.
In particular, read the comments by Craig himself. Funny how these things change.
What's it like to work as Craigslist and read this stuff? How could you be excited to come to work every day knowing that network effects have carved a deep moat around a site that people describe as "an exercise in torture"?
This is absolute bullshit. Craigslist is located in San Francisco, and they should be intimately aware of how fucking difficult it is to find an apartment in this city with Craigslist's garbage interface.
Are there any Craigslist employees reading this? Would any of you like a full time job sorting through the cesspool that is your apartment listings page? Oh, you wouldn't? I don't blame you, because that's my job right now, and PadMapper is the only thing helping me preserve what's left of my sanity.
Do a better job than them or shut the fuck up. Stop hurting people by trying to shut PadMapper down.
Are there any Craigslist employees reading this? Would any of you like a full time job sorting through the cesspool that is your apartment listings page? Oh, you wouldn't? I don't blame you, because that's my job right now, and PadMapper is the only thing helping me preserve what's left of my sanity.
Do a better job than them or shut the fuck up. Stop hurting people by trying to shut PadMapper down.
A key part of building a business around stealing IP is getting acquired by a big firm that can fight legal battles. YouTube executed well on this plan; I'm curious how Padmapper planned for this obvious development.
Here are a couple of legal questions (not taking sides, just honest questions):
Does the data belong to Craigslist or to those posting on Craigslist?
If so, is this in their TOS? I don't remember ever clicking a checkbox that says "we own your listing" whenever I have sold stuff on Craigslist or posted jobs/gigs. Maybe real estate is different.
Why would I want to give Craigslist ownership of my listing? If I were posting a property for rent I would probably want other services to pick-up the listing.
Similarly, why do they own the Copyright on something I have written?
Again, I don't remember ever giving that away either.
Does the data belong to Craigslist or to those posting on Craigslist?
If so, is this in their TOS? I don't remember ever clicking a checkbox that says "we own your listing" whenever I have sold stuff on Craigslist or posted jobs/gigs. Maybe real estate is different.
Why would I want to give Craigslist ownership of my listing? If I were posting a property for rent I would probably want other services to pick-up the listing.
Similarly, why do they own the Copyright on something I have written?
Again, I don't remember ever giving that away either.
Why is craigslist going after people who bring them traffic? Is it because they don't bring in much money themselves so they have to sell licenses? I've never really thought about craigslists business model. I assume it's almost entirely ad based / premium placement of your ad on their site based.
I'm rather tired of all the sanctimonious, edgier-than-thou commenters and bloggers who keep saying CL has a "shitty UI." And that't not just because I like it (it's clean, simple, and easy to use). I totally agree that it could be improved, and maps do make it easier, but the CL interface never breaks or gets in the way the way an actual shitty UI does.
Also, I think a lot of complainers are not aware of what it takes to roll out UI design changes to hundreds of millions of users. Frankly, I'm not very knowlegeable myself, but I can stop and think about it for a second and imagine there are huge logistical issues (performance, browsers, etc.) and huge psychological issues (non-technical users, familiarity, etc.)
And then there's the whole question of whether CL's UI should be improved. There are clear benefits to having a simple UI that does not do everything for the user. When I used it to find housing near SF, I copy-pasted addresses to map them, and I did a little extra work, but I never found that CL was actually in my way. For neighborhoods and recommendations, I asked real people. When I looked for a car, I made a little spreadsheet to give weighted scores to the features I wanted--I did not go around whining that CL didn't do everything for me.
My impression is that CL wants to be a basic classified service. For whatever reason they don't want to morph into a specialized listing service, and I can understand and respect that. After all, the CL interface is not that much different from HN's.
PS: I've had this item open in my browser for maybe an hour or two--why does the Add Comment button turn into a "dead link" OMG such a shitty UI, if they won't fix it, I am justified in rehosting all the content on a better site.
Also, I think a lot of complainers are not aware of what it takes to roll out UI design changes to hundreds of millions of users. Frankly, I'm not very knowlegeable myself, but I can stop and think about it for a second and imagine there are huge logistical issues (performance, browsers, etc.) and huge psychological issues (non-technical users, familiarity, etc.)
And then there's the whole question of whether CL's UI should be improved. There are clear benefits to having a simple UI that does not do everything for the user. When I used it to find housing near SF, I copy-pasted addresses to map them, and I did a little extra work, but I never found that CL was actually in my way. For neighborhoods and recommendations, I asked real people. When I looked for a car, I made a little spreadsheet to give weighted scores to the features I wanted--I did not go around whining that CL didn't do everything for me.
My impression is that CL wants to be a basic classified service. For whatever reason they don't want to morph into a specialized listing service, and I can understand and respect that. After all, the CL interface is not that much different from HN's.
PS: I've had this item open in my browser for maybe an hour or two--why does the Add Comment button turn into a "dead link" OMG such a shitty UI, if they won't fix it, I am justified in rehosting all the content on a better site.
There's no doubting the legality of Padmapper scraping Craigslist data, so I think now would be a good time for him to innovate and really push his other product, PadLister. If Eric were to write another blog post, I'd make PadLister the focus of it and start building a new community there.
I know Calacanis is a polarizing figure in the community, but I've always agreed with him that you shouldn't piggyback your company's success on top of a single service.
edit: especially one that doesn't allow you to use their data in the first place.
edit: especially one that doesn't allow you to use their data in the first place.
I wonder why craigslist hasn't shut down http://housingmaps.com yet. They appear to be doing the exact same thing as padmapper and mapskrieg, albeit with a much smaller feature set.
I feel like there is a win win solution for everyone here.
How about Padmapper develop a plugin for chrome/firefox that once you go to a craigslist appartment list page, it does what it does now: loops through them all and displays them on a google map. Padmapper could even develop on API on their end which handled all the hard work of actually finding the correct address of the posts and sends it back to the plugin in a nice format and all it has to do is plot in on a map that the plugin places on the craigslist page.
This sounds legal to me, as Padmapper isn't actually storing anything, and it puts a UI on top of the apartment search page.
How about Padmapper develop a plugin for chrome/firefox that once you go to a craigslist appartment list page, it does what it does now: loops through them all and displays them on a google map. Padmapper could even develop on API on their end which handled all the hard work of actually finding the correct address of the posts and sends it back to the plugin in a nice format and all it has to do is plot in on a map that the plugin places on the craigslist page.
This sounds legal to me, as Padmapper isn't actually storing anything, and it puts a UI on top of the apartment search page.
How does this differ from Readability or Instapaper stripping advertisements away and serving users pure content in their respective interfaces? I'm not sure what they're doing is illegal.
Ha. They need to sue Google and other search engines that provide caches. Good luck with that.
Second, it's not infromation that's protectable by copyright (at least not in the US). It's like the telephone book as others have said.
There's heaps of websites that mistakenly believe they have some copyrights to assert against users that harvest data. But it's not just websites. A longstanding, classic example of this sort of silly argument is WHOIS. The registries can't stand the thought of others getting the data. They claim bandwidth is an issue. Yet they won't provide (mirrored) bulk data, which would easily resolve any such bandwidth claims. They purport to "license" the right to do things with the data, yet they have no rights to grant to begin with. It is public data.
Then there's the "spam issue". As if email is somehow different from direct mail, and from telemarketing. Why don't we outlaw those practices?
Anyhow, again, it's public data: addresses and phone numbers. We call it the telephone book. If, e.g., a brokerage wants to have its summer interns do cold calling to solicit new institutional investors, the interns do not need a "license to use the telephone book". If someone listed in the phone directory does not want to be called, there's no law that says they have to be listed; they can use a nonlisted phone number.
People who list with CL presumably want their information to be found and to be presented in an appealing way. Maybe not exclusively on CL. Maybe CL should ask them what they would prefer.
Second, it's not infromation that's protectable by copyright (at least not in the US). It's like the telephone book as others have said.
There's heaps of websites that mistakenly believe they have some copyrights to assert against users that harvest data. But it's not just websites. A longstanding, classic example of this sort of silly argument is WHOIS. The registries can't stand the thought of others getting the data. They claim bandwidth is an issue. Yet they won't provide (mirrored) bulk data, which would easily resolve any such bandwidth claims. They purport to "license" the right to do things with the data, yet they have no rights to grant to begin with. It is public data.
Then there's the "spam issue". As if email is somehow different from direct mail, and from telemarketing. Why don't we outlaw those practices?
Anyhow, again, it's public data: addresses and phone numbers. We call it the telephone book. If, e.g., a brokerage wants to have its summer interns do cold calling to solicit new institutional investors, the interns do not need a "license to use the telephone book". If someone listed in the phone directory does not want to be called, there's no law that says they have to be listed; they can use a nonlisted phone number.
People who list with CL presumably want their information to be found and to be presented in an appealing way. Maybe not exclusively on CL. Maybe CL should ask them what they would prefer.
http://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-anyone-built-any-products-on-...
But now that 3Taps has found an ingenious way to get at the data with zero extra bandwidth cost to Craigslist (by retrieving it from the Google cache rather than CL itself), it's clear that what Craigslist really dislikes is competition.
While Craigslist is probably within their legal rights here, this case shows that for all their talk about their benevolent aims, Craigslist is no different from other companies.