
Craigslist, 3taps settle scraping/antitrust suits with $1M donation to EFF - sinak
http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/29/craigslist-3taps-settle-their-scrapingantitrust-suits-3taps-to-pay-1m-to-be-donated-to-the-eff?
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halflings
"In the settlement, 3taps, PadMapper and Lovely will collectively pay
Craigslist $3.1 million — $1 million from 3taps; $2.1 million from Lovely and
nothing from PadMapper. Craigslist has pledged to donate $1 million of that to
the Electronic Frontier Foundation over 10 years."

They're not settling with $1M donation to EFF, they're still getting $2.1M
from Lovely.

~~~
genericuser
And assuming 10 equal payments at the end of each of the 10 years, each
percentage point of average return Craigslist sees on that $1 million they
earn 55,000. In addition to a getting to presumably write off some
portion(all?) of the $100,000 they would be donating each year for tax
purposes.

So really they get more than $2.1M value out of this.

Edit: Yes, I realize there is no reason I should assume 10 equal payments over
10 years, given the information available. It was just the closest thing to an
'average case' I could define for a situation like this.

~~~
tempestn
Actually if you read the settlement itself, it does explicitly say $100k per
year for 10 years.

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vdaniuk
"Craigslist has pledged to donate $1 million of that to the Electronic
Frontier Foundation over 10 years." is very different from what the title
implies.

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IanDrake
Had a similar project that monitored CL and sent alerts. Got and C&D, talked
to a few lawyers and gave up.

At least CL has an alert system now.

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adam12
The EFF was actually supporting Craigslist's opponents in the lawsuit. I
wonder how much the Craiglist cost the EFF.

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zaidf
Here's hoping Craigslist dies. The good news is: it is already dying(albeit
slowly, one category at a time.)

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1337biz
I don't. It is one of very few platform that don't bother me with all the
clutter other websites have. No log-ins, subscribe-me, buy-premium, click-
this-ad bs. It just delivers relevant information straight to the point.

~~~
zaidf
Airbnb killed short term rentals category.

42floors is killing the commercial rental category.

OKC/Tinder killed the personals category.

There are three main categories keeping it alive: apartments, jobs and for
sale. Each of those categories are under attack from semi-successful startups
but no homeruns...yet.

If either For Sale or Jobs categories get an airbnb-like competitor, it will
be a massive blow for CL. The former is its largest category. The latter makes
it all the revenue. My hunch is that its Jobs category is already under attack
and they are having a harder time making revenue resulting in their aggressive
legal battles.

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tomschlick
The biggest thing that pisses me off about CL regarding house/apt listings is
that they don't require addresses! How is their mapping feature supposed to
work well if 70% of the listings are all grouped together with just the city
name? No wonder people are trying to fork their business.

~~~
tedunangst
How do the scrapers solve that problem? They scrape an address of "City". Now
what?

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codecamper
I talked with a friend of a friend one evening about his couple year old
startup. He had taken a good chunk of money from VC for the sole purpose of
fighting legal battles. His IP sounded novel & interesting, but the incumbent
was suing anyway.

It's a money game.

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walterbell
From a 2013 interview with Greg Kidd, [http://thisweekinstartups.com/greg-
kidd-of-3taps-twist-293/](http://thisweekinstartups.com/greg-kidd-of-3taps-
twist-293/)

 _"... this was decided by the supreme court definitively in unanimous
decision regarding, for instance, phone numbers in the case Rural v. Feist
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural))
... The facts are just facts. They are not creative expressions. They are
descriptive information and as such are outside of the bounds of what
copyright law was intended to cover.

... In other industries it is a long-standing practice of comparing prices,
supply and demand. My background at the federal reserve tells me, that’s how
markets work. The concept, that it is intellectual property, when it’s really
just transparency of price, supply, and demand, and that’s how markets work,
is a real stretch. It’s something that could, if it continues to go this way,
it could, basically, break the Internet, where you have to have permission to
compare prices, and compare supply and demand between different sources of
goods and services.

.. We just think that the business of “on-boarding” the postings and charging
for it is entirely different from the search and downstream interaction."_

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doorty
How does one go about upsetting this giant in the marketplace? Everyone wants
a better craigslist, but it's useless if they don't have the content.

~~~
55555
Start super niche and expand in concentric circles, I guess.

It's tough because people don't exactly look for new houses every single day
so coming up in their brain as the app/site of choice when they do need a new
house/apt is difficult. I would hate to do a "better apartment finder" startup
in this space (airbnb excluded).

I think craigslist grew pretty slowly over the course of a decade, right? Not
sure there's a recipe for overtaking them quickly that doesn't involve using
their data/userbase in one form or another.

~~~
prawn
You might almost need to loss lead for years, paying people in some fashion to
bring content. e.g., dress up listings similar to the way Airbnb sends out
their photographer to shoot your place professionally, or Uber is subsidising
drivers to establish a foothold.

If you did car sales (as a bad example), you could handle the entire process
for customers - sending out a photographer, building the listing and
researching an appropriate list price. Wear the costs until you have the brand
established and can start to make money. That would probably be attractive to
people who don't have time or aren't confident enough to do it all themselves.

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git-fucked
Part of what attracts people to places like craigslist/gumtree is that you do
it all yourself, though - it's easy to just take a couple of photos and
provide a few details to advertise a car or house sale without a third party.
If I wanted to have professionals take care of it I'd go to a sales garage or
an estate agent.

~~~
prawn
People do it themselves because the garage or agent charges a fee. I'm saying
that to tackle an incumbent, you could offer that service (and better) for
free to win customers across.

I disagree that it's easy to take decent photos and then deal with a sales
process (fielding calls, negotiating, etc). I have dozens of things I could
sell but don't because it's too much effort and I don't have time.

