Thing is, factual data itself, such as "Someone is offering to the public to sell X for $Y," is not subject to copyright. Copyright-eligible works must include some element of creativity, however small. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural)
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.
The more Sherman Act claims that are brought against web incumbents, the sooner one is going to stick.
The CL blog stinks of entitlement.
Craigslist "stole" the classifieds business from local newspapers. Now they are accusing others of trying to "steal" the "CL idea" from them.
I am one of (probably) the few who actually prefer a CL type interface. But the way CL is behaving in the face of competition is just embarassing. If someone wants to reshape the data, then you have to let them. The data is not the property of CL. If users do not want their data on some other site, then that's their issue to raise, not CL's.
Craigslist has never sued anyone for reimplementing their 'idea'.
Craigslist didn't 'steal' the classifieds business, I recall no point in time which I could find the classifieds in my news paper copied verbatim onto craigslist.
Craigslist offered a solution which was superior to newspapers and built a business around it.
As to who holds copyright on the data that's a question for the courts that is currently undecided, if it was cut and dried as to who held copyright on the the data then summary judgement would have already been filed.
I don't think craigslist holds exclusive copyright on the data so in my mind they may lack standing as whether 3taps is allowed to use the data becomes an issue between 3taps and millions of other users, perhaps a class action suit is more appropriate.
You'd need to show that CL copied ads from newspapers in order to attract traffic, and I don't believe that's the case. taking away market share and scraping someone's website for content are vastly different things.
3taps will file an antitrust countersuit, alleging that Craigslist maintains a [monopolistic control] over numerous markets related to online classified advertising. If successful, 3taps could open up the market to numerous innovations atop Craigslist data and bring about the user interface and search features, whose lacking seem to be exemplified by the popularity of sites such as PadMapper
-- Anti trust is an interesting angle.
The Irony is that newspapers (the competition) were all reliant on classified ads, which have been decimated by craigslist. As it is, Craigslist is just a good competitor with a more efficient system and better pricing. There are other choices, just at different pricepoints. Its not clear this is a winning formula.
It will be interesting to see if there are other angles of attack -- such as fair use -- which would also allow re-purposing of data posted to quasi-public internet places, that hold non-exclusive rights on said information.
Sigh, antitrust is a dead end. It might have been possible to argue prior restraint if Craigslist had stuck with their silly 'we own this' clause but they didn't.
My guess is that any judge would say "Can anyone else make a classifieds site?" and "Does Craigslist interfere with anyone on their site using a different site?". Since the answer will be 'No' and 'No' thus they don't have a monopoly.
It's a good angle. It raises abuse of copyright issues, and means Craigslist, if they lose, will have its use of copyright subject to greater scrutiny.
If data is deliberately made available to the public, then it's public data. Even if's made available for free, that won't stop some on the web from trying to repackage it and derive commercial benefit from it. We've seen this many times. These folks have been very lucky that the validity of their assumptions has not been thoroughly tested in court. Somehow they become convinced they own the data. In reality they are merely the distributor.
Even if CL wins, e.g., they are granted an injunction to stop another site from scraping, scrapers can just get the same data from search engine caches. It's hard to argue trespass to chattels when the alleged trespasser never touches your servers. Moreover, search engines are themselves scrapers so clearly scraping is not per se a damaging activity in CL's view, only when it suits CL to view it that way. Arguing that robots.txt is a "license" is a stretch. It's designed to be read by a machine not a human.
And what if CL loses? What are the stakes then? Well, I'll let you answer that one. What exactly does 3taps have to lose?
CL claims they own the copyrights to facts and descriptions uploaded by CL users. Are users aware of this? Is it reasonable?
Effectively acknowledging that the contents of a database may have varying copyright (owner, public works, facts, etc), but that the database itself is given protection implicitly if the database is "original and the result of substantial investment".
This is why you find fake data in Google Maps, the Rare Record Price Guide http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0953260194 and so on. Because they are representations of databases and all the companies behind them have to do to have the protection is to prove that other representations of the data have been sourced from their database, which they do by pointing at the secret fake data that is part of the database.
Does that not exist? It offers protection to any entity that has compiled an original source of data at their expense.
The US does not recognize copyrights over databases. The issue though is that depending on the ads in question there may be creative elements.
For example, suppose I place an ad to rent my house out and include just info. Not likely protected but if I do it in iambic pentameter, probably is protected.
What this wouldn't prevent is someone scraping CL for facts (appartments for rent, x bed, y bath, z sq ft), extracting those facts, and arranging them in another order. That doesn't strike me as protectable in the US, even if it involves scraping directly from CL.
I think we should create an app called clscraper which does as follows:
Given a set of resources, crawls across the site, extracting specific information from listings (price, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, square ft etc, contact info). Puts them in a very simple database. This should be 100% trouble-free copyright-wise at least in the US. The larger issue becomes what happens under other laws. However building a generic tool to extract (non-copyright-worthy!) facts from ads should by itself be more or less trouble-free.
Make this generic enough to work on most ad sites out there. Push the boundary back.
Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but this is how I see this whole ordeal.
Craigslist, a website that built up its user base and functionality by itself (lots of persistent hard work over the years) has listings.
3TAPS believes this information is public and should be freely accessible by anyone.
How does that make any sense at all? If I work for years to build a website, I will use and lease MY damn data however I please. A 3rd party has no right to claim that the website I have created that people use is "public property". I built the house. Now you're going to tell me it's a shelter?
Those who doubted that an exclusive license was truly exclusive should take note.
Craigslist here is arguing that they own essentially full copyright on all listings. This means if you advertise on Craigslist and you submit the same listing somewhere else you are guilty of breach of contract, and the other party may be guilty of copyright violation. How long before users start getting sued by one party to such litigation?
This is big trouble. We need to highlight that you give away all rights to all issue listings including the same material elsewhere.
tptacek|13 years ago
pjlegato|13 years ago
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.
Cushman|13 years ago
willrobinson|13 years ago
The CL blog stinks of entitlement.
Craigslist "stole" the classifieds business from local newspapers. Now they are accusing others of trying to "steal" the "CL idea" from them.
I am one of (probably) the few who actually prefer a CL type interface. But the way CL is behaving in the face of competition is just embarassing. If someone wants to reshape the data, then you have to let them. The data is not the property of CL. If users do not want their data on some other site, then that's their issue to raise, not CL's.
fleitz|13 years ago
Craigslist didn't 'steal' the classifieds business, I recall no point in time which I could find the classifieds in my news paper copied verbatim onto craigslist.
Craigslist offered a solution which was superior to newspapers and built a business around it.
As to who holds copyright on the data that's a question for the courts that is currently undecided, if it was cut and dried as to who held copyright on the the data then summary judgement would have already been filed.
I don't think craigslist holds exclusive copyright on the data so in my mind they may lack standing as whether 3taps is allowed to use the data becomes an issue between 3taps and millions of other users, perhaps a class action suit is more appropriate.
anigbrowl|13 years ago
001sky|13 years ago
-- Anti trust is an interesting angle.
The Irony is that newspapers (the competition) were all reliant on classified ads, which have been decimated by craigslist. As it is, Craigslist is just a good competitor with a more efficient system and better pricing. There are other choices, just at different pricepoints. Its not clear this is a winning formula.
It will be interesting to see if there are other angles of attack -- such as fair use -- which would also allow re-purposing of data posted to quasi-public internet places, that hold non-exclusive rights on said information.
ChuckMcM|13 years ago
My guess is that any judge would say "Can anyone else make a classifieds site?" and "Does Craigslist interfere with anyone on their site using a different site?". Since the answer will be 'No' and 'No' thus they don't have a monopoly.
einhverfr|13 years ago
willrobinson|13 years ago
Even if CL wins, e.g., they are granted an injunction to stop another site from scraping, scrapers can just get the same data from search engine caches. It's hard to argue trespass to chattels when the alleged trespasser never touches your servers. Moreover, search engines are themselves scrapers so clearly scraping is not per se a damaging activity in CL's view, only when it suits CL to view it that way. Arguing that robots.txt is a "license" is a stretch. It's designed to be read by a machine not a human.
And what if CL loses? What are the stakes then? Well, I'll let you answer that one. What exactly does 3taps have to lose?
CL claims they own the copyrights to facts and descriptions uploaded by CL users. Are users aware of this? Is it reasonable?
3taps' Answer should be a fun read.
buro9|13 years ago
http://www.caret.cam.ac.uk/copyright/Page92.html
Effectively acknowledging that the contents of a database may have varying copyright (owner, public works, facts, etc), but that the database itself is given protection implicitly if the database is "original and the result of substantial investment".
This is why you find fake data in Google Maps, the Rare Record Price Guide http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0953260194 and so on. Because they are representations of databases and all the companies behind them have to do to have the protection is to prove that other representations of the data have been sourced from their database, which they do by pointing at the secret fake data that is part of the database.
Does that not exist? It offers protection to any entity that has compiled an original source of data at their expense.
einhverfr|13 years ago
For example, suppose I place an ad to rent my house out and include just info. Not likely protected but if I do it in iambic pentameter, probably is protected.
What this wouldn't prevent is someone scraping CL for facts (appartments for rent, x bed, y bath, z sq ft), extracting those facts, and arranging them in another order. That doesn't strike me as protectable in the US, even if it involves scraping directly from CL.
einhverfr|13 years ago
Given a set of resources, crawls across the site, extracting specific information from listings (price, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, square ft etc, contact info). Puts them in a very simple database. This should be 100% trouble-free copyright-wise at least in the US. The larger issue becomes what happens under other laws. However building a generic tool to extract (non-copyright-worthy!) facts from ads should by itself be more or less trouble-free.
Make this generic enough to work on most ad sites out there. Push the boundary back.
Diamons|13 years ago
Craigslist, a website that built up its user base and functionality by itself (lots of persistent hard work over the years) has listings.
3TAPS believes this information is public and should be freely accessible by anyone.
How does that make any sense at all? If I work for years to build a website, I will use and lease MY damn data however I please. A 3rd party has no right to claim that the website I have created that people use is "public property". I built the house. Now you're going to tell me it's a shelter?
einhverfr|13 years ago
Craigslist here is arguing that they own essentially full copyright on all listings. This means if you advertise on Craigslist and you submit the same listing somewhere else you are guilty of breach of contract, and the other party may be guilty of copyright violation. How long before users start getting sued by one party to such litigation?
This is big trouble. We need to highlight that you give away all rights to all issue listings including the same material elsewhere.