

3Taps Files Countersuit, Says Craigslist Is Anticompetitive - sbashyal
http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/24/3taps-files-craigslist-countersuit-refutes-copyright-infringement-says-craigslist-is-anticompetitive/

======
graue
I read the core of 3taps' counterclaim — pages 25-30 — and I recommend it.
It's a good read.

Specifics of 3taps' scraping aside, I'm starting to see that this is a
particular case of a general problem that also applies to Twitter, with its
recent API changes. They and Craigslist each control access to an extremely
large and growing volume of user-generated content that people post there with
the intention of making public. Users post that content to Craigslist/Twitter
primarily because each is the largest website of its type. And both sites are,
increasingly, trying to preserve their control by restricting third-party
access to the UGC inside them, at the cost of reduced innovation.

It's worth dwelling on the fact that large, powerful corporations can be built
off the backs of user-generated content in this way. What do you do when a
service like this adds a term in their TOU that you don't like? When their web
UI is lacking basic functionality? Runs really slow? Doesn't work in your
favorite browser? In any of these cases, you hit a big roadblock, because you
don't really have a choice. The content is on Craigslist/Twitter — even though
these companies did not create it.

This problem seems to be one that will recur over and over on the internet. I
can see three main avenues to fight it:

1\. Technological — Create decentralized services that are competitive with,
and somehow eventually overtake, the centralized ones. This is what StatusNet,
Tent.io and several other efforts are trying to do in the social networking
space. But this is hard. Decentralization makes it much more complicated to
even build a working service at all, let alone one with a consistent, smooth
and intuitive user experience. And success would result in less profit,
compared to solving the much easier problem of building a successful
centralized service. So developers who could pull this off are strongly
incentivized not to.

2\. Organizational — Start nonprofit organizations that are committed to
interoperability and innovation in their bylaws, and have them run centralized
services. This has been done successfully at least once: Wikipedia, operated
by the Wikimedia Foundation. Their nonprofit status doesn't mean everyone is
happy with their management, or that Wikipedia is perfect. But they provide
full data dumps, and the content is under a free license, and their Statement
of Purpose
([https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_by...](https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws#ARTICLE_II_-
_STATEMENT_OF_PURPOSE)) would make it hard to justify changing that. So, no
matter what, you can always innovate with content on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia was the first site of its kind, so it got big the same way major
commercial sites did — by having the right idea and execution at the right
time. It would be hard to replicate that success in 2012 by creating a
nonprofit-owned Twitter clone. But now that Wikipedia is established, it seems
to work.

3\. Legal — Just as there are privacy protections in the law (moreso in the EU
than the US), so could there be regulatory requirements for web services over
a certain size to allow some degree of interoperability.

If we don't find some kind of solution, I imagine that in 5 or 10 years, large
incumbent internet sites like Twitter, Craigslist and heck, let's throw
Facebook in there as well, could be the new RIAA and MPAA, using the aggregate
value of their content to bludgeon competitors into submission and restrict
innovation, to the detriment of the public, except that in this case, it's
that very public that created the content enabling these companies to bully
others in the first place. Craigslist v. 3Taps is not the end of this.

------
awolf
I hope that 3Taps follows through. This countersuit may help set a clearer
precedent for who owns the data posted on public forums and what third party
developers should be allowed to do with it.

Earlier this year I was searching for an apartment in San Francisco.
Craigslist was my only source for places to apply. The good apartments got
snatched up pretty fast so I wanted a way to make sure I saw _every_ listing
that came through. The problem: there are easily 500 new listings added every
day, and approximately 20% of these were re-posts of the same place. It's very
difficult and draining, just trying to keep track of what you've already seen
and where you left off since the last time you checked.

So I did what any self respecting iOS developer would do: I made an app. It
worked pretty much like an email inbox. Each new listing was like a new
message. Refreshing the feed was like checking your email. Reposts were
marked. You could bookmark and store things. The app colored the message cells
based on whether they were from the most recent import or not (i.e. the app
keeps your place).

The best part? It worked pretty damn well. I gave it to a few other people via
Test Flight and they were hooked as well.

So, again, I did what any self respecting iOS developer would do: I put the
app on the App Store. I figured that since my app was exclusively a craigslist
client - a tool to make using craigslist better - I might have a better chance
of not incurring craigslist's wrath. I put it on sale for $3.99 (it's called
Craigslist Commando, if you're curious) and hoped for the best.

The app did pretty well given that I did zero promotion for it. It was brining
in around $30-40/day after Apple's cut. Unfortunately, my hopes for escaping
craigslist's wrath did not pan out. I received a cease and desist letter from
them two weeks ago. I'm still waiting on hearing back from them. They've gone
silent on me after our initial contact in which they told me to expect a draft
licensing agreement. I'm guessing they went silent because they have bigger
things on their plate right now. I have opted to keep the app in the store
during this time, but I'm not very optimistic that craigslist's licensing
terms will be tenable.

All of this to say: I have a pony in this race. I respect craiglist's rights
to do what they think is necessary to protect their business. However
something about this just doesn't jive for me:

a) People go to craigslist and create content about some aspect of their
lives. They, as the original authors of the content, post it to craiglist
_with the intention that the general public can see it_.

b) Other people go to craigslist to view content posted to a public forum in
hopes of finding something. This process is frustrating and difficult.

c) I create a tool that makes the process of finding something on craigslist
less frustrating and difficult.

d) Craigslist threatens to sue me for creating the that tool. This despite the
fact that I'm helping both: the original authors of the content who would like
to have their posts seen by their target audience and, the viewers of the
content by making the viewing process more efficient.

I suppose craigslist has these _rights_. But it just doesn't seem _right_.

~~~
res0nat0r
> a) People go to craigslist and create content about some aspect of their
> lives. They, as the original authors of the content, post it to craiglist
> with the intention that the general public can see it.

Craigslist users only agreed to have their content displayed on the Craigslist
site, not on any other random site on the Internet who wants to relist their
posting without the users explicit permission.

~~~
Avitas
As a regular Craigslist user (buyer, seller and message board poster), my
personal preference is to have material I post only accessible directly from
CL. In other words, I do not want my classified ads, contact information
contained therein, pictures, social banter, business ads and other information
available to any external information service or website.

This is my expectation not only of CL, but of many sites. I understand that
others may disagree. But, I suspect that my expectation of non-propagation of
material is the default expectation for many or most sites that accept user
submitted material.

If CL is somehow forced to let others scrape their content, I would welcome an
option to turn on a switch that will block/hide/protect the material I
contribute from external entities. On second thought, I would rather have the
do not share option be the default and let me opt in to sharing everything
always, share by material classification or one post at a time.

~~~
creat0
I would expect that many users would feel this way.

I can guess why. But could you tell us specifically?

Assume for the sake of the question that whereever the data may appear on the
web, it would always have a "Source: " line to indicate its original source,
i.e. the site to which you submitted it. Assume that the integrity of the data
could also be verified, e.g., through a digital signature.

~~~
Avitas
A few reasons came to mind when I originally wrote it. I know that there are
many tens of other reasons why it would make good sense to keep CL content CL-
exclusive.

Of course, I realize that this must be tempered with the realization that
there are situations where scraping CL and re-posting the information on
another site may make sense for the original poster (e.g., a hotel ad).

Here are a few of the negative items that come to mind for just classified
ads:

\- When I complete a transaction and delete a CL ad, I do not want other
interested parties calling, texting and e-mailing me hours, months or years
afterwards

\- I already dislike the 10-to-1-ish ratio of SPAM/scammer/nutjob banter to
communications from legitimately interested parties. I suspect any
proliferation of my postings beyond CL will only tend to increase this ratio.

\- The text and images within my classified ads may be more easily accessible
to scammers who just need some content to farm and post elsewhere (e.g., other
classified forums, eBay, AirBnB, etc.)

\- Sites which do the automated scraping of CL can directly be or can become a
target and/or searchable repository for intelligence gathering and source for
creating new or expanding existing personal identification databases

There are countless other scenarios ranging from good to bad regarding this
subject. For now, I'm convinced that the potential for the bad, the
incompetent, the annoying, the negligent, the criminal and other negative
scenarios outweigh the good. This is really meant to apply to how I use CL. As
I mentioned before, there are undoubtedly specific scenarios where many of the
potentially negative items would be moot for specific CL users.

Obviously, there are other factors here too such as the commercial
viability/legality/precedent of allowing non-CL entities to use CL resources
with or without restriction to directly or indirectly profit. From my
perspective as a user, it's not really that important other than an arguable
matter of principle.

------
ghshephard
The irony is that if Craigslist would just take the time and effort to add a
bit more functional / elegant interface, these third parties would have no
reason to exist, and all the legal matters would disappear

I understand that Craigslist wants to "Serve their community" and believes
that changing their interface would interfere with that mission somehow (both,
in terms of having to charge more in order to hire UI people, as well as
engineer their Ops environment to handle additional load), but, I have to
believe their is some way of simultaneously serving their community, providing
a rapid response, as well as keeping their cost and overhead down while at the
same time slapping a somewhat more elegant GUI and Search Interface.

~~~
mratzloff
It's just fear of screwing up a winning formula. Craigslist is making money
hand over fist; they could hire some front end guys if they wanted to.

~~~
ghshephard
Well, they are also concerned about (A) Increasing their overhead, and (B)
screwing up their uptime by introducing complexity (requiring even more
investment in Ops) and finally (C) slowing down their responsiveness (once
again, requiring investment in Ops, and Hardware, and engineering to get back
that speed)

They really buy into the KISS principle over there, and it's worked well for
them, but, the industry has moved forward, and it is possible to (affordably)
add design and search flexibility without screwing up your uptime/responsive
time.

------
ujeezy
Direct link to the counterclaim: <http://3taps.com/papers/3taps-answer-
counterclaim.pdf>

As a developer who received a C&D from Craigslist for a pretty innocuous app
(seriously, it was built in a weekend), I'm glad to see someone test
Craigslist's legal position in court.

At the very least, I hope it will expose that Craigslist is not just a happy,
hippy-infused neighborhood listserve like many seem to think; rather, like
most other companies, it actually goes to great lengths to quash threats to
its very profitable business.

------
creat0
If Craigslist can assert copyright protection over classified ads and can make
people grant exclusive licenses to the ads they submit, then why didn't
newspapers do this before the web? Shouldn't there be a nice line of precedent
for Craigslist to cite in its Complaint?

I think those web developers who actually think they "own" UGC may be in for a
rude awakening if something like this ever goes to trial. As a UGC site they
are providing access, and that's all. There may soon come a day when users
will not need third party websites in order to provide access to data they
want to make public. Web developers should consider themselves lucky if they
are running a UGC site and managing to make people believe they, not the
users, own the content. Cease and desist letters alleging copyright
infringement claims that have no legal basis (where is the case law that says
anyone can copyright classified ads?) will only work for so long.

------
res0nat0r
This is like scraping Amazons reviews since they are available via Google and
claiming you can display that user submitted content how ever you like. I
can't see 3Taps having much of any case here.

~~~
natrius
I don't know of any precedent that gives sites that accept user-generated
content grounds to sue when their _users'_ copyrights are violated. I would
like to hear of one.

~~~
pyre
If you're scraping user-submitted content by accessing (e.g.) CraigsList, then
I would think that CraigsList could try and claim that it was unauthorized
access of their systems.

~~~
natrius
Agreed, but my understanding is that 3Taps pulled the listings via Google
cache.

------
kefs
People with the pitchforks seem to be forgetting something..

3Taps is not scraping Craigslist. Google is scraping Craigslist, and 3Taps is
scraping Google. As far as common sense is concerned, Craigslist has no say
concerning 3Taps data.

~~~
overcyn
Why not? The primary question here is whether 3taps is engaging in copyright
infringement as Craigslist claims.

Does everything scraped by Google becomes public domain? If Google News
scrapes an article from the NYT, can I then scrape the article from Google and
republish it?

------
systemtrigger
If 3Taps wins, the gold rush is on to create CL interfaces using 3Taps' API.
The major roadblock becomes images. Image URLs are provided in 3Taps' API but
since no one can hotlink to CL, images are useless. How do you build a better
CL interface if you can't use images?

~~~
creat0
Why do you need to hotlink? What is one more click?

    
    
        <img src="http://example.com/1.jpg">Photo</a>
    

No.

    
    
        <a href="http://example.com/1.jpg">Photo</a>
    

Yes.

