
An Open Letter to Craig Newmark - pg
http://krrb.com/craigslist
======
throwaway9848
Craigslist has been incredibly consistent about its position. It would be
shocking of Krrb didn't get a C&D. The author's mock surprise and petty
insults come off really pathetic given this is clearly a planned publicity
stunt.

CL is simple, unobtrusive, and doesn't make its users feel like it's try to
monetize every click or pageview. That's why the dominate the market. I love
it that they sue the hell out of anyone that tries to ride on their coattails.
If they're doing it wrong, someone can prove it buy building a better
classified ad site and clean up the market.

EDIT: since I'm getting downvoted anyway, and I have no conflict of interest
(not a CL employee, relative, and very infrequent user).... pg, instead of
posting stuff like this, you have unique resources at your disposal to build a
CL clone that behaves in the way you wish CL would behave. How hard could it
be? Or is it that building up and operating a classified listing site while
allowing 3rd party sites to repost your listings is a money loser?

~~~
tempestn
No, it's that craigslist has massive network effects working for them, so
there's no incentive for buyers or sellers to use a different site, even with
a better interface and feature set.

3taps is alleging that this monopoly position, combined with craigslist's
legal and technical efforts to block any innovation that makes use of data
posted on craigslist, constitutes anti-competitive behavior. Whether that
assertion has legal merit I don't know, but it seems we'll soon find out.

Edit: Ironically, Krrb itself is essentially an attempt to create this 'better
craigslist' you describe. They attempted to deal with the craigslist monopoly
problem by providing an easy way for users to post on _both_ craigslist and
Krrb, for which they received the C&D.

~~~
rhizome
_They attempted to deal with the craigslist monopoly problem by providing an
easy way for users to post on both craigslist and Krrb, for which they
received the C &D._

Is it unfair to observe that the way to create a new craigslist should not
depend on content already posted on CL? Of course, if krrb or whoever was the
source of the content which it then autoposted to CL, they would run afoul of
the autoposting prohibitions on CL that Craig does not enforce (or is being
paid not to enforce) against the third-party resume sites (jobvite, sourcery,
etc.) that have been ruining the CL jobs section over the past couple of
years.

~~~
tempestn
It's a tough question. If craigslist truly does have a monopoly, then it
indeed might be fair for competitors to have some use of content already
posted on craigslist. Also, in the case of Krrb it's the user posting the
content, who owns the copyright to such content, using their own computer to
copy it to Krrb. Krrb is simply providing a tool for them to do so more
easily. That certainly seems like it _should_ be acceptable.

~~~
rhizome
Well, then lets cut to the chase: does Craigslist have a monopoly? If so, in
what way are they using it illegally?

~~~
tempestn
You can read 3taps' antitrust claims submission here:
[https://3taps.com/papers/3taps_Amended_Counterclaim.pdf](https://3taps.com/papers/3taps_Amended_Counterclaim.pdf)

The 'Nature of the Case' section at the beginning provides their allegations
regarding craigslist's monopoly. IANAL so I don't feel qualified to discuss
the legal merits, although reading the claims they at least sound worth
investigating.

------
jmduke
It's important to note that this is, at first glance, a different beast than
the padmappers/3Taps issues, which were primarily about scraping craigslist
data and placing it on a different site. Krrb has users press a button, which
scrapes a given post.

The end result is the same -- the same data as Craigslist being displayed on a
different site -- but this is coming from the Krrb users' own volitions, which
I think makes this much more difficult to justify from Craigslist's point of
view.

I honestly don't understand why Craiglist has taken this tack. I think the
moves they've made in the past are respectable (as in, they have the right to
protect their data and leverage their position) -- I just think there's more
value to the company and the community to become the Amazon of local.

~~~
res0nat0r
I think this is the same issue as Padmapper, just on a much smaller scale.
Don't write code that will re-display/re-post content of a Craigslist post on
your 3rd party website.

I bet if the button were changed to just cut/paste an html link to
<city>.craigslist.org/post all would be well.

This is just CL trying to keep their postings exclusive to their website of
which they've spent many a time and money trying to build and brand.

~~~
imgabe
The question is whose data is it? Padmapper just scraped whole site for
apartment listings. This is an action by the user to take their post, which
they wrote, and redisplay it somewhere else.

If I write an ad for a chair I want to sell, I should be able to post it to
Craigslist and any other site I want to. The Krrb button is no different than
the user manually copying and pasting her own content into Krrb's posting
form.

~~~
potatolicious
I don't think this is what's happening here - for either Krrb or Padmapper.

It's important to note that Krrb and Padmapper both make the distinction that
they're scraping _facts_ , not posts. One is copyrightable, the other is not.

You can lay claim to the sentence "I have a room in a 2-bedroom apartment for
rent in Williamsburg, going for $1500"

But you _do not_ have the right to own the _fact_ that there's a room for rent
in Williamsburg, in a 2-bedroom, for $1500. It would seem that Krrb and
Padmapper both scrape the facts only, not textual content - or at least,
that's what the letter seems to say.

This is a frequent misunderstanding of the Padmapper issue. Padmapper never
scraped posts wholesale from Craigslist - it scraped and displayed _only_
structured data (i.e. facts), and in fact if you wanted to contact the seller
it links you directly to the Craigslist post!

~~~
stinkytaco
Does it matter that they are using Craigslist infrastructure to automate the
process? Consuming bandwidth that Craigslist pays for and taking advantage of
the hosting Craigslist is offering their paying customers? Sure, facts are not
copyrightable, but if you took a stack of phonebooks from a recycling bin and
starting selling them as your own, I think the company that printed the phones
books might have an issue with that.

~~~
Vivtek
As I understand it, Krrb is _not_ using Craigslist infrastructure - it is
simply taking the post already in the user's browser because they navigated
there in the process of entering the post, and copying the text out for reuse.

Craigslist can only litigate on that basis because they know Krrb doesn't have
the means to defend themselves. That's not a public good.

~~~
stinkytaco
The post I was replying to was grouping krrb and padmapper. I don't know much
about krrb or what it does. Seems like a glorified copy past so I'm not sure
how that exactly translates to a business worth putting this much effort into
defending. Maybe I'm missing something.

But padmapper is clearly leveraging Craiglist's infrastructure for padmapper’s
own benefit. I find that difficult to defend.

~~~
Vivtek
I agree with you on padmapper.

------
samstave
I used to have a great deal of admiration for Craig, and craigslist... It's
all but dissolved.

After his/their repugnant treatment of Eric/padmapper and their more than
glacial acceptance of the fact the CL UI sucked and was actually punitive to
the UX - and yet another example of CL just being jerks, I am pretty much
completely devoid of any respect for Craig/CL.

It's too bad, especially given how Craig attempts to keep a socially
responsible image - I think his persona is a farce.

~~~
atacrawl
I've never bought into this "nice guy" image Craig Newmark seems to have
cultivated for himself. Between numerous interviews where he gives flippant,
condescending answers to reasonable questions and the overly litigious actions
of the company that bears his name, I don't have a particularly high opinion
of the man and I'm not surprised by this latest episode with Krrb.

~~~
larrys
In a sense he is a man who is limited in many areas but has been thrust into
the limelight and given much power.

A cautionary tale to anyone placing special powers on someone who has achieved
something great, that is that they have special powers everywhere and are
generally right or have special insight about most things. They aren't. The
best baseball player isn't any better at buying a car than a regular guy (and
probably not anywhere as good as I am!)

------
antiterra
While I agree with the main argument of the letter, I don't understand the
characterization of CL's law firm as "infamous," and its employees as
"cronies." What exactly are they infamous for? Just sending C&Ds on behalf of
Craigslist?

Further, the argument that zealous attempts at protecting IP means you should
be .com not org falls pretty short to me. The Red Cross has a policy of
sending C&Ds to game companies that use the red cross on white logo, and also
claim such use violates the Geneva convention. This may be overreach, but it
would be a strange stretch to claim such actions meant the Red Cross should
dump their .org domain.

~~~
keithnoizu
I agree Antiterra,

I've worked with a few associates at Perkins Coie. They represented the
nonprofit I work for at no cost in an arbitration case against a dodgy web
development shop that sued our nonprofit for nearly a fourth of our annual
budget over a breach of contract after we fired them for being incapable of
keeping our site up under even modest traffic levels. (Load testing and not
letting junior developers with no experience with caching, MVC best practices
etc, do all the work: how does that work)

The Lawyers were nice, polite, well mannered, treating us and the opposition
with respect, etc. They were a pleasure to work with. I didn't see a single
crony in the bunch.

Lawyers are lawyers. They do what they have to do to protect the interests of
their clients. That is their job. Perkins Coie is very good at their job. That
doesn't some how make them bad people.

------
colinsidoti
The tone of this letter is horrible IMO. I understand you're angry, but I
imagine this will piss him off more than rile him up. I'd rather see you take
them to court with a strong case than start a public, one-sided flame war.
There must be a syndicate of investors that realize it would beneficial for
them in the long-run to see Craigslist lose the stronghold they have on
classified's data. PG (submitted this) and Garrytan (got angry re: padmapper)
might be a good starting point.

~~~
acjohnson55
I think it's a good letter. Up until now, I wasn't aware that Craig's List had
moved in such a contentious and litigious direction. It sounds like instead of
innovating and improving their service, CL is spending its time trying to
squash anybody who tries to add value to their product. They have a right to
do what they want as a business, but I also have a right to judge their
practices and protest with my voice and my wallet. I get turned off by overly
whiny and emotional complaint letters, but I found this one more factual than
emotional. I will be avoiding use of Craig's List's services until I feel like
they are allowing people to innovate off their platform and ceasing to try to
own their users' content.

~~~
pbsdp
"... squash anybody who tries to add value to their product"

Add value? They're _extracting_ value.

> _I will be avoiding use of Craig 's List's services until I feel like they
> are allowing people to innovate off their platform and ceasing to try to own
> their users' content._

Will you also be boycotting all books, TV, and movies until their authors
grant unlimited licenses to use the content for whatever value-extracting
purpose anyone wants?

Will you boycott your local businesses until they agree to let competitors
post in-store advertisements?

------
ghshephard
They certainly get marks for consistency. I'm willing to bet that 90+% of the
regular HN audience would have been able to predict _precisely_ what CL would
do in the face of scraping (and yes, that's what the krrb button does) CL
content.

It's someone ironic in the face of Marco's post regarding the open web, that
CL maintains such a moat around their content through litigation/legal
threats.

Don't get me wrong - I absolutely understand why CL does it, and I'm sure most
of the business savvy people here realize it's a profit-maximizing strategy
given CL's current market position.

But - it might be just a local maxima.

I wonder, if given a different approach, CL might be able to build something
more open and visionary; a platform that other developers can build on top of,
instead of being prevented from doing anything innovative by CL and their
legal team?

~~~
bsaul
i'm also willing to bet that not a single CL user would understand why CL
claims ownership on their ad content, when the user themselves are the ones
publishing it elsewhere.

on a sidenote, the fact that the legal system makes it so expensive to defend
themselves that they prefer to just obey really means the rich always get
justice on their side. it's a really big issue. i wonder why there isn't any
start up that tries to address it.

------
aneth4
The worst part is the hypocracy... what Buckmaster claims about himself:

"Possibly the only CEO ever described as anti-establishment, a communist, and
a socialistic anarchist"

[http://www.craigslist.org/about/jim_buckmaster](http://www.craigslist.org/about/jim_buckmaster)

~~~
bsaul
i've often noticed that many people claiming to be communist simply have an
unhealthy love/hate relationship with money.

~~~
swamp40
The quote loses all its context without the underlying hyperlinks.

He's turning around these press insults and using them as badges of honor.

It was Fortune Magazine that questioned whether he was a communist, because he
wasn't focused on maximizing profits.

------
natch
The big red flag here is the author splitting hairs about the copied content
being "factual data." This tells me he is insincerely attempting to navigate a
perceived loophole. Anyone who has visited "Best of Craigslist"
([http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/all/](http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/all/))
will see that there is a ton of creativity there, not just factual data. This
goes for classifieds posts as well.

And yes it is the user's content but it is posted on CL subject to the TOS.

Put yourself in CL's shoes: they have to defend not only against "fledgling
startups" but also against deep pocketed companies like Yahoo that sometimes
buy fledgling startups. They cannot leave their service vulnerable to the
whims of any parasitical company that would come along and attempt to exploit
their users, their community, and their users' content.

Another piece that Krrb is pretending to ignore is that the users only take
the initiative to post in the first place because of the good will and
critical mass that Craigslist has, with long investment and significant
sacrifice, been able to create. Leveraging third party services is a time
honored model for startups, but a startup founder should not expect a free
pass if they try to do so in an abusive manner that induces users to violate
the TOS.

------
x0x0
craigslist's position is pretty clear, whether they publicly admit it or not:
they don't want, and will aggressively work to prevent, other companies
attempting to bootstrap themselves off craigslist's content. I don't know why
we have to all pretend we're shocked about this.

~~~
acjohnson55
I think you mean craiglist's users' content.

Shouldn't the user have the right to do what they want with the classified ad
they wrote?

~~~
throwaway9848
Sure, they have the right to post their content anywhere they want, but after
that it's CL's. Same is true with comments, posts on discussion/Q&A sites,
etc.

~~~
IanDrake
>but after that it's CL's

If that were true then CL would be liable for _their_ content. If a pimp posts
a message and CL owns it, then CL is responsible for pimping. When state AG's
have pressed this issue, CL claims they don't own the message.

They can't have it both ways.

~~~
stan_rogers
Um, yes they can. You are free to post the same content elsewhere -- you still
have copyright in the material. What you don't have is rights to redistribute
content _from_ Craigslist. The publisher's rights (which you granted) are
different from the author's rights, but they still exist. That doesn't make
them liable for your content.

~~~
msandford
What's the difference between copying and pasting from a single text file to
both CL and krrb and copying and pasting from a CL post that you wrote to
krrb? They're functionally equivalent as you're the author and retain your
authorly rights in either case.

The krrb tool extracts data from a file not on craigslist servers, but from
the browser cache on your own computer. It's a browser plug-in, not a server-
side tool. If CL is okay with you downloading a copy so that you can see the
post that you just made (which they obviously are by virtue of how their
service works) then in fact there is no additional bandwidth being consumed!

~~~
capulcu
Well technically an author, too, isn't allowed to scrape content from CL. Just
like an author of a book is not authorized to make a copy of his own book.
Can't break publisher's rules.

It is just that, with a copy-paste job, it would be impossible to detect this,
which is why they seem functionally equivalent. But actually they're not.

Also automation and convenience have huge legal implications. I can, for
example buy an iPod in the US and gift it to a friend of mine in Turkey. We
have effectively circumvented state tax. I can't, however, write a website
that acts as a broker between US passengers landing in Istanbul airport, and
people who want cheap iPods. Even though they would be technically paired up
with a "friend" and would be within their legal rights to bring valuable goods
into the country.

I can have a friend stay a few days at my house, but I can't turn my house
into a hotel with Airbnb. Volume and convenience affect the bottom line for
different parties.

------
HackyGeeky
hmm.. so this guy - Craig - works his ass off all these years and builds a
site that makes him money. HIS hard work paying HIM money.Now someone else
comes along and wants to build a site that has the potential to hurt Craig's
work..

Wonder why Craig doesn't like it..

Before pointing a finger at Craig, how about you build something from grounds
up, get to Craig's level and then allow anyone else to just take stuff away
from you, piece by piece.

He is still providing value to people by letting people post and use it. Of-
course he is making money, but anything worth charging will be charged.

He is just as passionate about his site and what he has built as you are.
Maybe he just doesn't want you to build a building on his island. So be it,
there is a whole world out there waiting for you.

Bottom line : Stop wasting time, build something else. You are smart enough to
work on a completely unique idea of your own. Why spend your energy on sipping
from someone else's ocean when you have an ocean inside you.

~~~
hindsightbias
It is always interesting to see a site where many users are all about free
market and generally libertarianish thinking Craig should provide the
infrastructure for them to monetize off of, because information should be free
or something.

I guess we need to heavily regulate these digital monopolies, coerce them
somehow.

------
richardjordan
This is a pointless waste if time. The guy has made shed loads of money and
his actions have clearly demonstrated he doesn't give a flying whatever about
anyone's opinion of his actions and will continue to do whatever maximizes his
profit. I say that without positive or negative judgment. It just is what it
is. The whole - hey we know you're really a nice kid so stop bullying the
other kids - schtick never worked in the play ground and it doesn't work as
grown ups. I see this sort of thing all the time. We don't live in a society
where shame has any meaning any more so trying to appeal to someone's good
nature and the whole "hey it's not you it's your minions" crap is of no use.

~~~
keithnoizu
I've chatted with Craig before. He has helped us at greatnonprofits.org quite
a bit in the past. Regardless of what business decisions the executives in
charge of craigslist are making that does not somehow make Craig not a nice
guy. In particular I respect his decision to not second guess or meddle with
the judgement calls of the executives in charge of craiglist. I am sure if he
has any disagreements with how they do business he has the tact to discuss
this with them in private.

As far as I can tell Craig cares a lot about the world. I'm sorry if he has
been focused on customer service and his nonprofit work and doesn't have time
to go out of his way to save every single wantrapanuer that believes they've
figured out some way to make a dime off of his past investment in craigslist.

~~~
dshanahan
I've spoken with him too, very recently. It's my impression he's still
actively answering support emails for CL (as in daily). No?

~~~
keithnoizu
That is the impression I get. He comes to our annual events but I've been out
of the country living the expat life and keeping expenses down . . . so you've
likely spoken to him more recently than me. He talks with my CEO now and then
and helps give her advice on growing our nonprofit and helping our consumers.
Which we appreciate a lot.

I don't really follow his comments in the news and so on but everything I've
gleaned first hand and second hand about the guy leaves me thinking that he's
still a class act, and all around traditional geek.

As far as kribbr or whatever it is called goes . . . if there is a long
history of litigious behavior from an organization and you go ahead with a
business model that may spark a C&D don't act like your personal hero has
stabbed you int he back. Whether the C&D was grounded or not how is it
occurring a surprise. CL has every legal right to try to protect their
business model to the extent allowed by the law. If you genuinely feel that
they've over stepped it then fight it. Or come up with a business model that
disrupts the space with out needing to leech off of what is already there.

------
colinsidoti
You should piggyback your plugin into popular installers to get this on
millions of computers. Then, don't make them push a button to post it on krrb,
do it automatically. Make sure your TOS at install time says this is going to
happen.

(I may or may not have been involved with a company that did this to great
success.)

~~~
tempestn
So instead of providing a useful service, they should distribute malware
designed to... what, maximize their chances of being sued by craigslist?

~~~
colinsidoti
Does it, though?

The plugin today quite arguably scrapes Craigslist programmatically. I think
Craigslist has a case there.

However, if Krrb instead injected JS at post-time to publish cross-site, I
think that argument becomes much less convincing.

You can make a case on either side, but I think doing it at post time is
important (for one thing, it guarantees that the publisher is actually the
person krrbing it)

~~~
tempestn
Does it increase the chances that they would sue? Yes, it does. Does it
increase the chances that they'd win? Perhaps not, if your arguments hold.
Does that matter? No, because you're still talking about stealth distribution
of a program that tracks and republishes user data without their knowledge or
permission! (And no, a notice buried in the TOU doesn't count.)

Edit to reply to below: Ah, ok. Your phrasing of "piggyback your plugin into
popular installers to get this on millions of computers" sounded like you were
planning to sneak it in without users' awareness. If it's an explicit opt in,
then I would have no great problem with that from a user perspective. (Of
course as a user I'd prefer to just install what I want, rather than being
presented with options for a bunch of unrelated stuff, but advertising and
affiliate programs keep things going, so I deal with it.)

Personally don't have a problem with the part about scraping something I might
post on a classifieds site. Whenever I post something on a public web site I
expect it to be scraped and to appear on search engines and such. It was
specifically the idea of a service running on my computer, watching and
potentially publishing aspects of my web use (and who knows what else),
without my knowledge or permission that I took issue with.

~~~
colinsidoti
What if we put a little checkbox that says "Install the krrb plugin to
automatically post your craigslist listings on krrb as well, thus increasing
your chances at a sale."

I'm defining "piggyback downloads" as the extra page that comes up in someones
installer. Isn't this a well-established practice? Maybe it's disappeared in
the past few years?

I also love seeing this argument come within a community that's generally
supportive of programmatically scraping that same user data and republishing
it without user permission (although that was more what Padmapper did, not
krrb).

Edit: your point re: increase chances of being sued vs. increase chances of
success in court is well taken.

------
abalone
Fundamentally different from other scraping sites. This is a client-side
browser extension to extract _your_ own content that you posted. I haven't
read the TOS but users _should_ retain ownership of their own content (as in,
it's a good business practice that endears users). Petty move on the part of
Craigslist.

Really patronizing tone though and I bet that will backfire on them.

------
roin
Craigslist is the saddest example of a near natural monopoly formed in a two-
sided market on the internet. Considering the pace of innovation over there,
it's only a matter of time until they are disrupted. In the meantime we'll
dread looking for apartments, buying/selling through classified ads, and
anything else that we need to do on Craigslist.

~~~
moheeb
I don't get your comment. How is Craigslist sad? Everyone seems to use them
and I hear very few complaints.

And I personally find the website very easy to navigate.

------
thinkcomp
Craigslist litigation history is available at:

[http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/index.html?id=3388&table...](http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/index.html?id=3388&table=partydockets)

------
wise_young_man
eBay owns a reported at least 25% of Craigslist [1]. Whenever I tell people
they are genuinely surprised. Craigslist never has really added huge features
in years and I honestly think it is because eBay slows them down and doesn't
want them to. Think about how Twitter and Facebook have grown built APIs, 3rd
party integration and apps. Craigslist doesn't even have an official iPhone
app.

They've had the capital, the resources, and the users who provided the content
which were all they needed and could eventually launch a way to ship and
provide feedback for users and destroy eBay. I think Craig sold out and
doesn't have a lot of say in the legal matters which is why it happens in the
first place and Craigslist really will never improve.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_eBay#ci...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_eBay#cite_note-18)

~~~
wpietri
I doubt Ebay has any influence on the day-to-day operations of Craigslist.
They have those shares because CL gave them to an early employee who then sold
Craig out. It was not an investment CL sought or wanted, and I suspect that
the official answer to any Ebay request is a curt GFY.

------
tlrobinson
From the first couple paragraphs I though the was going to drop some
bombshells, but nope, just another C&D.

------
icn2
Krrb just make a tool for user's convenience. Krrb didn't do any scraping of
the content of craigslist. It is user's action/intent to scrape and repost.
There is nothing wrong with Krrb just provides a tool for user's convenience

------
arikrak
Craigslist is a poor website but since everyone uses them, everyone is locked
into using them. Any site that helps people use Craigslist with other sites
might cause people to eventually switch from Craigslist entirely. This applies
to both finding listings and posting listings.

That's why Craigslist is so litigious, even on the posting ad side. It seems
hard to justify legally, but they probably figure small startups won't be able
to fight them in court.

------
rossk
A thousand startups and every newspaper have failed to topple craigslist-- but
maybe their own over-litigiousness will (finally!) be the downfall.

------
tonywebster
I don't know if I should be disappointed in Craig Newmark or not, as I don't
know how much control he has. He certainly has control to speak his mind. I've
seen him at the National Conference for Media Reform, Netroots Nation, and
Code for America events, so I know he's a good, well-intentioned guy.

------
hammockfight
You are a competitor. You are scraping material. Just make your app easier to
use. I mean it's not rocket surgery. How could the New York Times let you
scrape an article to put on your own site. Just give it a rest and take your
lumps and move on.

~~~
mthoms
What if you owned the copyright to the New York Times article?

------
smackfu
At the end of the day, clever technical workarounds still usually get a cease-
and-desist, because the people sending the letters have no incentive to
understand why your workaround is so clever.

------
Fuxy
Can't anyone build an alternative to craigslist? It may not get as famous but
if it actually stood for the openness described in that article it would be a
hit with most of us at least.

~~~
seunosewa
Many people have built alternaives to Craigslist. For example, Gumtree, which
is popular in the UK.

------
rdl
I wish someone would actually go to court vs. Craig; they're not as bad as
Intellectual Ventures, but only because copyright law sucks somewhat less than
patent law.

~~~
tptacek
Uh, please do flesh out the comparison between a company that essentially pays
law firms to sue people for using ideas and a company that builds a
classifieds site and then refuses to let people build other businesses on top
of that site.

~~~
rdl
(I don't _strongly_ believe in this, but I do thing both IV and Craigslist
suck. And it's worse in a way because IV was always evil; Craigslist actually
was a force for good at one point, and has become evil.)

The postings themselves belong (in a moral sense; I'm not sure what the
current craigslist license is) to the people posting them. If I post my room
for rent, I would be happy to have more people see the listing, especially
with a clean UI (like padmapper). I'd be aggrieved if Craig Newmark blocked
people from seeing the listing. The "server load" issue is a red herring;
people have been more than willing to pay a reasonable fee to offset that, and
it's a minimal amount of load to begin with.

It's even more egregious in the case of a posting tool, which is what this
appears to be.

I agree IV is a vastly bigger deal; I personally just soft-boycott Craigslist,
but if I had a chance to destroy IV while taking only moderate legal or
financial damage, I'd do so. But I think a lot of that is due to the patent
system being totally horrible, and copyright being only moderately broken (and
trademark being only slightly broken). If Craig/Buckmaster had the ability to
use the patent system to kill services which might compete with them, they
probably would claim it was "helping their users by making the market more
comprehensive and efficient", too.

Sure, it's the KKK vs. Augusta National, but mostly a difference in degree.

------
antitrust
Craig: legal team, take care of any violations.

Legal team: Hmm -- we get paid for anything we find. Let's widen the scope a
little bit...

------
RobotCaleb
Pressing spacebar or pagedown hides content on that webpage. :(

------
goshx
Hi answer will probably be: TL;DR

