Craigslist Continues To Be A Legal Bully When It Comes To Aggregators
from the disappointing dept
For the most part, the geek community seems to like Craigslist — and for good reason. The company is a model of how to build up a massively successful company without “being evil.” Most of the postings on the site still remain free, with a few exceptions — and in the cases of those exceptions, it seems to almost always make sense to charge there. The company always seems focused on providing a good service to its community and generally supporting that community. The company also has made a name for itself by keeping marketers out, and focusing on engineering. On top of that, having dealt with folks there, they always seem pretty straightforward and genuine. I will admit my “bias” upfront here: I like Craigslist.
But the one thing that the company has done for years that still really strikes me as odd is how they lawyer up and go after others aggressively at times. There are a few areas where they do this, but the least defensible to me is when they go after sites that aggregate their listings and point people back to them. We first noted this more than six years ago, when Craigslist threatened a site for creating a universal search. Craigslist, itself, only let you search within a certain location, rather than globally. And because someone else did it, Craigslist pressured them to shut it down. It looks like that’s still happening.
timlash points us to the news that the site Jaxed recently received a cease & desist and shut down its links to Craigslist’s listings. The C&D apparently claimed that listing Craigslist results in its aggregated search results was a “misuse” of Craigslist, but I don’t quite see how. I know that Craigslist hates anyone scraping their site, and claims that it uses up bandwidth and resources, but there are technical means to block such things, rather than breaking out the lawyers with dubious theories about how linking to a site is misuse of that site…
Filed Under: aggregation, cease & desist
Companies: craigslist, jaxed
Comments on “Craigslist Continues To Be A Legal Bully When It Comes To Aggregators”
ever think of simply emailing them and asking why? I hear Buckmaster responds to most of his email.
Re: Re:
I’d really like to hear a response from Craigslist. Why choose legal measures over technical ones? Why not try to outperform the competition instead of trying to shut them down? Inquiring minds want to know!
I'll bet it's ad views plus annoyed at parasites.
Greedy grifters and (automated) scraping may yet kill the internet.
Re: I'll bet it's ad views plus annoyed at parasites.
Or, you know, not.
Technical measures don't work.
You can block IP addresses, but IP addresses can be changed.
You can even set up a robots.txt, but then when the robots.txt get ignored what do you do?
Re: Technical measures don't work.
Theres lots you can do. For example, you could server-side convert all text postings into jpgs and do your own search’s ‘behind the veil’, allowing no direct access to your DB. Problem is, it makes your site less useful.
Re: Technical measures don't work.
Stab a mofo in the eyeball.
At least
someone from Jaxed can post questions to the legal forum on craiglist to get advice and raise awareness
Security Silly!
I don’t mean internet security, I mean personal security; for it’s users.
If you’ve used the site more than once, you’ve most likely noticed that they have a very visible notice that informs people to “only do business with people you can meet in person” which prevents the majority of the scam attempts on it’s users. The majority of scams on craigslist are because someone believed that someone else was selling something they actually had no intention of providing to the buyer. If you can meet in person and exchange the goods for the payment, this is almost never an issue.
If craigslist allowed more people to easily search for things outside of their local area, this scam would become far more frequent, and unfortunately, craigslist (not the scammers) would get the blame.
I’m surprised after all of your examples of craigslist being blamed for things that are not it’s fault (prostitutes using it’s services, etc) that you would not realize this simple fact.
Re: Security Silly!
could not have said it better.. well said and thought out!
Re: Security Silly!
Living in rural north-central Florida, it’s not uncommon to shop and travel to Orlando, Tampa or Jacksonville for good deals off Craigslist. Multiple searches and compares are a pain without an aggregator.
Re: Security Silly!
I came here just to comment on this but you already nailed it. The post should be updated to reflect the actual reasons for which CL is trying to avert specialized search engines or aggregators.
Re: Security Silly!
I collect old cars and old motorcycles. They don’t sell pre-war Norton motorcycles very often in my hometown. I have absolutely no problem with driving long distances to pick up things I want.
CL doing this is idiotic.
Re: Re: Security Silly!
Again, if the craigslist features and policies don’t suit your needs, why not just walk away? You paid nothing to use it. It’s not like you’re going to have to pay an early termination fee for giving it up.
It doesn’t do what you need it to do. So walk away and find a service that does. Ebay is free for buyers to use and you can even set it up to get notifications when a Norton comes up for sale there – or get notified even if it’s just some Amal carbs or Lucas rectifiers being parted out (yeah, I go that far back with bikes)
Google “nationwide classified ads”. 944,000 hits on those words in that order. “free nationwide classified ads” gets 31,300 hits. I’m certain there are other sites out there that do what you want. Why not use them instead?
There's a reason and it's simple
Craigslist is for local communities, face to face transactions and moderated by the local community. It is not intended to be a nationwide or worldwide shopping site.
If local searches only don’t work for someone then craigslist simply isn’t the site for them. They can use ebay or whatever other sites are out there.
It’s that simple.
Craigslist also has to pay for the resources to deliver the ad content whether that deliver is to individuals or a spider. So an aggregator not only violates the spirit and intent of cl, it costs them money.
Re: Craigslist is for local communities, face to face transactions and moderated by the local community. It is not intended to be a nationwide or worldwide shopping site.
So why is it against the law to prove that?s wrong?
Re: Re: Craigslist is for local communities, face to face transactions and moderated by the local community. It is not intended to be a nationwide or worldwide shopping site.
Looks like you read the first line and not the last line.
“Craigslist also has to pay for the resources to deliver the ad content whether that deliver is to individuals or a spider. So an aggregator not only violates the spirit and intent of cl, it costs them money.”
Why is against the law for people to siphon the gas from your car? They’re not stealing your car, are they? They’re simply costing you extra money every month.
Stopping aggregators is no different then you putting a locking gas cap on your car. You’re paying for the fuel, it’s your decision when and how you use it. Craigslist is paying for the bandwidth, it’s their decision when and how it gets used.
Re: Re: Re: Craigslist is for local communities, face to face transactions and moderated by the local community. It is not intended to be a nationwide or worldwide shopping site.
Repeatedly visiting the site with no intention to buy anything also costs them money, but that doesn’t make it illegal.
Re: Re: Re:2 Craigslist is for local communities, face to face transactions and moderated by the local community. It is not intended to be a nationwide or worldwide shopping site.
That would be because people who don’t have an intent to buy don’t try to re-sell the information for a profit.
Surely you’re not claiming that a spider reading 50 million ads per month is equivalent to someone window shopping?
Re: Re: Re:3 Craigslist is for local communities, face to face transactions and moderated by the local community. It is not intended to be a nationwide or worldwide shopping site.
No, I was pointing out that your implication that “cost them money = illegal” is untrue.
Re: Re: Re:4 Craigslist is for local communities, face to face transactions and moderated by the local community. It is not intended to be a nationwide or worldwide shopping site.
Ever read the contract you and everyone else agrees to when they use craigslist?
“f. If you aggregate, display, copy, duplicate, reproduce, or otherwise exploit for any purpose any Content (except for your own Content) in violation of these Terms without craigslist’s express written permission, you agree to pay craigslist three thousand dollars ($3,000) for each day
on which you engage in such conduct.”
I was always under the impression that breaking a contract was something less than legal.
Re: Re: Re:5 Ever read the contract you and everyone else agrees to when they use craigslist?
I don?t recall signing any such contract.
Re: Re: Craigslist is for local communities, face to face transactions and moderated by the local community. It is not intended to be a nationwide or worldwide shopping site.
Why is it against the law to prove that you’re using the gas in your car wrong? Should anyone who thinks they know better than you come and siphon the gas out of your car to use it properly?
Craigslist is paying for the bandwidth. They shouldn’t have to pay for serving up more than a million pages per day for free so that someone else can make money from it.
Re: Re: Re: Craigslist is for local communities, face to face transactions and moderated by the local community. It is not intended to be a nationwide or worldwide shopping site.
They shouldn’t have to pay for serving up more than a million pages per day for free so that someone else can make money from it.
Should they have the force of law to control how others use the internet?
Re: Re: Re:2 Craigslist is for local communities, face to face transactions and moderated by the local community. It is not intended to be a nationwide or worldwide shopping site.
Straw man. They’re not trying to control how others use the internet, only their site.
Re: Re: Re:3 Craigslist is for local communities, face to face transactions and moderated by the local community. It is not intended to be a nationwide or worldwide shopping site.
“Using the internet” includes downloading web pages from web sites, and they’re trying to restrict how others do that.
Re: Re: Re:4 Craigslist is for local communities, face to face transactions and moderated by the local community. It is not intended to be a nationwide or worldwide shopping site.
The thick is strong in this one.
Using your “logic” no website can require an account or registration because that prevents your poor, abused users from accessing their web pages.
End of discussion.
Re: Re: Re:5 Craigslist is for local communities, face to face transactions and moderated by the local community. It is not intended to be a nationwide or worldwide shopping site.
No need for personal attacks now, is there? Or is that the best you have?
I thought it was obvious from the topic of this whole discussion, but maybe not so I’ll rephrase.
“Using the internet” includes downloading web pages from web sites, and they’re trying to restrict how others do that using the court system.
I highlighted the change in that sentence for you. You can see how this is substantially different from requiring a login, right?
I’ll throw in a quote from the blog post too: “I know that Craigslist hates anyone scraping their site, and claims that it uses up bandwidth and resources, but there are technical means to block such things, rather than breaking out the lawyers with dubious theories about how linking to a site is misuse of that site…”
Re: There's a reason and it's simple
You do realize there is nothing at all stopping you from looking at postings in other communities, right? For some collectors or people living in far off, isolated areas (as others have posted) being restricted to a single, ‘local’ area is rather worthless.
Re: Re: There's a reason and it's simple
You do realize that people have been suggesting that craigslist without state-wide, nation-wide and word-wide searches is “worthless” since craigslist was created, don’t you?
It’s a free service that is “rather worthless” to you personally. What’s wrong with that?
Why not go find a site that does suit your needs and frequent that site? Why insist that craigslist be turned into just another internet classifieds shithole simply because it doesn’t suit your personal needs?
There are around 50 million users who find that craigslist does suit their needs. That’s a fair sized niche to market to. Nothing wrong with niche marketing, is there?
Re: Re: There's a reason and it's simple
except for the fact that you’d have to perform a search for each location – for someone willing to drive 3 states away, that’s a lot of overhead rather than performing 1 simple search.
Re: There's a reason and it's simple
The problem is that when using cragslist to say search for an apartment in a certain neighborhood it gives you listings many miles away and not in a neighborhood you want to live. We used an aggregator site that was awesome to narrow down the result to a very specific neighborhood, now it doesn’t work and makes the search process even harder.
In the case of Jaxed they started by just helping to search for cars, then pretty much expanded to everything.
Re: Re: There's a reason and it's simple
That isn’t a problem with craigslist, it’s a problem you encountered because you tried to use the wrong tool. A phillips head screwdriver isn’t a problem when trying to put in slotted screws, it’s just the wrong tool.
Craigslist just isn’t a good solution for everyone. It’s great for people looking to buy/sell face to face with their neighbors and who take an active part in managing their online community.
cl does provide nearby results BTW. For example.search bozeman.craigslist.org for “husqvarna” You get 2 local items and “Few LOCAL results found. Here are some from NEARBY areas…” with 21 matches from as far away as Kalispell (300 miles away)
Re: Re: Re: There's a reason and it's simple
I’m sure the CL users whom I’ve bought cars from (from up to 5 states away, and always in person after some email exchanges) are quite happy that I had the use of a site like Jaxed. Without it, I would have never found these cars.
I’m also pretty certain that the use of ‘scraping’ type sites helps CL overall, as the people who use it are more likely to sell their items. My neighbours have nothing I currently want, maybe yours do.
In the end, they are all classified ads. CL can ultimately do what they want, but what is the cost of some bandwidth for happy end users who sell their items and continue to use their service? There are many sellers who likely aren’t even aware that people found their items using a ‘scrape’ type site, but the item got sold which is the whole point.
Sites like Jaxed just pull the base information, with a redirect to appropriate CL, Kijiji, or Ebay site itself. What’s the issue?
Re: Re: Re:2 There's a reason and it's simple
“What’s the issue”?
Can you not see that the issue is that your goals are not the same as craigslist’s goals?
It’s the people who want aggregators and more irrelevant spam on craigslist who have the issue, that’s what the article is about. cl doesn’t want it.
Do companies not have a right to operate the way they choose to if their choice conflicts with your goals?
Re: Re: Re:3 There's a reason and it's simple
Do companies not have a right to operate the way they choose to if their choice conflicts with your goals?
Sure… so you don’t have a problem with the aggregators operating the way they choose, right?
Re: Re: Re:4 There's a reason and it's simple
You’re ignoring the issue of cost and using precisely the same arguments that all commercial spammers make: why shouldn’t someone else be forced to pay for me to make money?
Craigslist is paying for the bandwidth to serve up the ads. Craigslist gets to decide who they give access to. It’s that simple. If someone doesn’t respect their wishes then what are they supposed to do, just roll over and say “Oh gee, it’s just our bad luck that we have to pay an extra $10,000 a month for the bandwidth so that all these leeches can make money from our site”?
I’ve never heard of a case where cl sued someone without first sending them a letter telling them to stop doing what they’re doing. If the idiots didn’t stop then there isn’t any bullying going on. It’s a defensive action and not an offensive one.
Honestly I don’t understand why people consider it their “right” to try to convert every website and every source of data on the planet into yet another commercial shithole for businesses to use/abuse in any way they feel.
Re: Re: Re:5 There's a reason and it's simple
I’ve never heard of a case where cl sued someone without first sending them a letter telling them to stop doing what they’re doing.
My question is, what law has been broken? Trademark? Copyright? Contract? I don’t see it. You (and they) may not like what the aggregators are doing, but that doesn’t make it illegal.
Honestly I don’t understand why people consider it their “right” to try to convert every website and every source of data on the planet into yet another commercial shithole for businesses to use/abuse in any way they feel.
One person’s commercial shithole is another’s useful service.
They could also consider a partner ship to make their overall service better. Sad they would rather litigate than innovate.
I suspect the future of most companies, with that opinion may well be shorter than those that prefer to just stride forward and innovate even more.
Re: Re:
“make their service better”?
How would that make their service better? Their service works just fine for what it was intended to do: serve local communities.
If a religious website sues porn sites who post on their site, would you say that they “litigate rather than innovate”? Porn postings run counter to the purpose of a religious website (well, some religions anyway)
Craigslist objects to aggregators because those things turn the site into something that goes against their published goals.
Item #1 on the cl ‘about’ page:
Q: What is craigslist?
A: Local classifieds and forums – community moderated, and largely free.
That’s their goal. Litigating to stop others from thwarting their efforts towards those goals doesn’t stop any innovation, and “innovation” does not apply to writing an aggregator anyway.
Why don’t the aggregators simply build their own national classifieds site instead of capitalizing on craigslist? Because they aren’t innovating, they’re simply greedy middlemen eager to insert themselves into the process so they can skim a percentage off the top of the massive traffic that craigslist generates.
That’s opportunism, not innovation.
What’s the big deal? There are several working aggregators, that have been around forever. I use allofcraigs.com, which works beautifully.
Craigslist on steroids
There’s something really cool going on in New York, and it’s called Swifto. You name what you need now and the price you are willing to pay for it, and the system will find you someone that can deliver that. To me it’s the evolution of Craigslist. Just awesome.
So why don’t they sue Google? You can search for “site:craigslist.org “. OMG!!!!!!!!1
The Key Word is "Community"
I cannot see the value in aggregating Craigslist content, and would anticipate a great deal of hardship on the buyers/sellers/Craigslist in allowing it.
The whole point of Craigslist is not that it’s a “free” service, it’s that it’s local. It’s for people who want to buy/sell things and be done with it, without all sorts of backwash about not getting what you thought you were, not getting paid properly, not having to deal with packaging (which can be a pain in the shorts sometimes) and shipping (a very real abuse on some services, and fraught with peril in any event).
It’s a way to say “I got this thing for sale, if you’re interested, come see it, and it it’s the right thing, buy it.” You’re all done. Take your money and go shopping or take your new toy and go play. There’s no backlash possible. Everyone agrees they’re happy at dealtime or they don’t do business. Why would anyone want to know there’s a [insert coveted item here] for sale in Atlanta if they live in Detroit? It blows the whole thing up.
Not to mention the scammers. As it is, they’re like ants at a picnic. They don’t seem to understand the underlying principle of the system as it is. I list an item on there, and get no less than 10 scammers latch onto me like leeches. No, I don’t ship. Yes, cash means cash, on and on. Can you imagine if it was a country-wide or worldwide listing? Your email inbox would look like the victim of a coordinated DOS attack, and there’s no practical way to filter it lest you miss the real prospects.
But, I don’t think any kind of lawsuit is the answer. All it really needs is for Craigslist to add a checkbox to the ad creation screen that allows somebody to say an ad is “local only”. Then the scrapers could ignore those ads, and only aggregate the ones where people are willing to sell/ship to distant customers or scammers.
Re: The Key Word is "Community"
The point is that the ads on CL are local only already. The scrapers don’t care, they ignore it, and profit from their scraping.
Re: Re: The Key Word is "Community"
I’ve never sent a dime to Jaxed.com, nor have they ever asked for one. Doesn’t sound very profitable to me.
Re: The Key Word is "Community"
“I cannot see the value in aggregating Craigslist content, and would anticipate a great deal of hardship on the buyers/sellers/Craigslist in allowing it.”
This is exactly the problem – just because YOU don’t see value in something doesn’t mean there aren’t thousands of others who do.
Re: Re: The Key Word is "Community"
A lot of people see value in breaking into stores and stealing electronics. Just because YOU don’t see value in that doesn’t mean there aren’t thousands who do.
A lot of people see value in siphoning gas out of your car. Just because YOU don’t see the value in that doesn’t mean there aren’t thousands who do.
A lot of people see value in generating ad revenue by posting porn flicks on church websites. Just because YOU don’t see value in that doesn’t mean there aren’t thousands who do.
If there’s such a huge pent up demand for a nationwide classifieds site then I’ve got a completely insane, wildly crazy idea. Why not innovate? Why not create a website that services those thousands of people just dying for a way to communicate?
Oh, wait. That’s right. If you creates that website then you’ll actually have to pay for the bandwidth and servers to serve up the ads and there goes the profit margin, right down the toilet.
Aw, fuck it, why not just steal bandwidth from some other website? After all, just because THEY don’t see value in their resources being stolen doesn’t mean that you don’t.
I was born and raised in a different era. Back then they spread fear by telling people they’d be indoctrinated into communism and become communist zombies only capable of repeating whatever was in the little red book, never allowed to think for themselves. I never dreamed I’d live to see the day when people would become capitalist zombies and just repeat whatever the capitalist office line is rather than think for themselves.
To me it looks like an Left For Dead map but instead of just gibbering all the zombies keep reciting “We can make money from it, that makes it right”.
Re: Re: Re: The Key Word is "Community"
I’m not sure what the point of this post is, exactly. Are you saying that by looking at an ad in a different area, we are thieves? That we are “stealing” CL bandwidth? If an item sells off of CL in a week, instead of two months, doesn’t that DECREASE the amount of bandwidth being used? And I REALLY don’t get the zombie reference.
Re: The Key Word is "Community"
I’ll give you the flip side. I recently posted an ad on CL. I got exactly ONE reply. Had people from all over NorCal could have seen my ad, I would probably have had my truck sold by now. Instead, I must rely on 3×5 cards at the laundramat (probably just as effective as CL at this point) or succumb to the exhorbatant fees on eBay. My truck is a fixer, for someone on a budget. To tack an extra $60 on to the price, to send off to the corporate giant, is contrary to the goals of both the buyer and myself. Sellers finding a buyer and buyers getting a better deal is win – win. By the way, my “Community” extends FAR beyond my back yard. And I’m very confused as to why, if I want to buy something from someone on the east coast, and take resposibility for the transaction, does it “blow the whole thing up?” I cannot quite grasp the logic of that statement.
Re: Re: The Key Word is "Community"
I occasionally volunteered in the cl help forum and it still never ceases to amaze me that when giving an excellent free resource, people complain about it.
It’s a free service. Walk away from it. You are out nothing. It doesn’t do what you want it to do, so don’t use it.
No one says you can’t search the various locations and make arrangements to buy whatever you want. What the TOU says is that you can’t post your items in *their* communities.
You don’t like free and you don’t like to pay for it – I don’t know of anything in between. Maybe barter for ad space on a highway billboard?
Re: Re: Re: The Key Word is "Community"
I occasionally volunteered in the cl help forum and it still never ceases to amaze me that when giving an excellent free resource, people complain about it.
If nobody complains about it, how can it get better? I’m sure CL would rather have people engaged enough to come on the forums and talk about their dissatisfaction than simply take their business elsewhere as you suggest.
Re: Re: Re:2 The Key Word is "Community"
Call me crazy but http://www.craigslist.org/forums/?forumID=8 looks suspiciously like a discussion forum for folks to suggest/request new categories, new cities, and general changes.
They listen to users – there was lots of discussion and voting on whether HTML should be banned in posts and that sort of thing.
Re: Re: Re:3 The Key Word is "Community"
I know, that’s what I’m saying – their message is “tell us what you’d like to see so we can serve you better”, as opposed to your “if you don’t like it, go somewhere else”.
Re: Re: Re:4 The Key Word is "Community"
There isn’t just one group/type of people requesting changes. People who are requesting it to become yet another dumping ground for commercial spam and opportunists *should* go elsewhere.
There are lots of places on the internet where people can go and post/view commercial ads and crap ads from collectors and junk peddlers. Craigslist is the only site I know of where people can find things they want/need locally.
If people want crap commercial ads they can use oodle or traderonline or kijiji or any of the other sites. They don’t need aggregators to do national searches on those sites, they already offer exactly what people claim to be looking for, nationwide searches.
I say claim because that’s not what they’re actually looking for, they’re looking to cash in on the high traffic on craigslist, nothing more.
Re: Re: Re:5 The Key Word is "Community"
So feedback is good as long as it’s feedback you agree with, otherwise they should go elsewhere. Just playing devil’s advocate! 😉
Re: Re: The Key Word is "Community"
Sorry, I didn’t notice it was you posting again or I would not have replied. I can’t find a way to delete my post.
I don’t play the troll game. End of interaction.
I have purchased many items using Jaxed to search CL. I had one person not reply, and assumed that they just wanted to keep to the CL local sale only mantra. Every other transaction moved forward without a problem. I think the belief that CL user only want to sell things locally is false. The only given is CL users want to sell things.
Amusing observation
The previous headline list at the top of the page includes “Saying You Can?t Compete With Free Is Saying You Can?t Compete Period”
So the aggregators are saying they can’t compete directly with free (craigslist) by offering their own classifieds service, all they can do is leech off the existing one.
Isn’t that saying they can’t compete, with a *spuut* at the end? (google “Victor Borge phoenetic punctuation”)
Re: Amusing observation
According to Craigslist, these guys aren’t competing with CL at all, remember?
jaxed C & D demand
Hey Folks its interesting because based on previous won law suit cases, Craigslist lost all right to any claim against site mash jaxed due to a thing called usury
usury comes into play when a entity uses another persons property even if it can be proven and documented that it wasn’t theirs in the first place!
For example you own a piece of property like your house and yard and a rich neighbor moves in next door to you..
Your neighbor then decides while you are away on vacation to add a retaing wall to not only his property but extends the wall out to around 12 feet onto your property interfeering with your use and acess of your property etc.
you go to rip it out when you get home and rich neighbor threatens suit…
Confused by this and how can he sue you? You contact an attorney for help…
Attorney says leave the wrongful wall in place avoid conflict with neighbor and let court/judge decide it in court…
the suit drags out for about 5 years…
at end of suit judge asks if the 12 feet of wrongfully place wall is still there both sides agree in answer yes its still there
plaintif points to attorney and says following attornes advice is why wall remains
guess what final shocking decision of judge is in this case?
Judge said because of the length of time that the neighbor had this wall in place he gained right to that part of his neighbors property by a thing called usury because the malfeasance had lasted and or existed too long
He further said plaintiff should have ripped out the wall immediately suffered arrest if neighbor got the Police or Sheriff involved etc.
This is a real case that actually happened in Mc Call Idaho back in the late 1970’s early 1980’s and my parents were part of the plaintiffs a local home owners association with a beach all the membership could use the neighbor moved in next to the property was a Doctor with money to burn!
Hence based on this case jaxed actually could defend and win this case against Craigs list if push came to shove
Walt
Re: jaxed C & D demand
I think you have the wrong legal principle, usury is lending money at unconscionable rates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury
I can’t think of the name of the doctrine you’re talking about, but maybe somebody else will mention it. Even so, I doubt real property law applies to Craigslist’s claims against Jaxed. I think the principle you’re talking about is relevant only to land.