Here’s a comparison. You walk into a used instrument store looking for an eight string bass. Another fellow walks in at the same time looking to sell the bass. You wink at each other and meet outside, buy that bass, and cut out the middleman.
It’s his bass and your money, but the reason you knew he had a bass to sell was the store. Likewise, it’s “your” listing data, but the reason padmapper is able to hire someone in the third world to read the internet and manually screen scrape the data—or whatever it is they’re going to do—is because craigslist aggregated it for them.
This is very similar to the kerfuffle over allegations that Bing was scraping results from Google rather than organically indexing the web. It’s quite possibly legal, but it’s not particularly admirable.
And I join Phil (disclosure: He once called me a “giant,” so I owe him) in suggesting that arguments that the ends justify the means are suspect.
I’d prefer to see the padmapper folks put up a pirate flag and openly declare war on craigslist. Just come right out and call them the evil empire already.
> the reason padmapper is able to hire someone in the third world to read the internet and manually screen scrape the data—or whatever it is they’re going to do—is because craigslist aggregated it for them.
Here's where the rubber meets the road. As far as I can tell, 3taps is taking data out of the Google Cache and re-aggregating it. While stealing someone's aggregation of data is clearly wrong, re-aggregating data from public sources clearly isn't, both from a legal and moral sense, at least in the US.
The material facts in each ad are public data. The fact that such an ad appeared on Craigslist with such facts is also public data.
> And I join Phil...in suggesting that arguments that the ends justify the means are suspect.
I'm also suspicious of ends justifying the means, but that isn't the whole story here.
> I’d prefer to see the padmapper folks put up a pirate flag and openly declare war on Craigslist. Just come right out and call them the evil empire already.
To me, Craigslist is the one being selfish and shortsighted here. If they back legislation seeking ownership rights over re-aggregation of data, that would be an "evil empire" move. It would be better for everyone if they subvert Padmapper instead of fighting it.
from a moral standpoint, how does scraping the google cache of craigslist differ from scraping craigslist directly? it's the same information and the google cache is clearly filling in some "infrastructure of the interwebs" role here.
Yes: the copy of your listing that resides on Craigslist's servers is theirs.
You are free to post the same listing to as many other sites as you want; Craigslist doesn't demand exclusivity. In that regard, your listing remains yours. You have no other claim to the posting on Craiglist itself.
But he said this doesn't involve touching Craiglist's servers at all. I admit I am drawing a blank as to how this would work, but the (seemingly impossible) description he offers seems to get around that objection.
By your logic, they've "gotten around the objection".
Not so fast. The full objection that people have with spammers isn't that the spammers have their email address. It's exactly how the email is used which comprises what people object to.
I've been looking at Padmapper, and as far as I can tell, they are basically providing a better interface to Craigslist largely by aggregating data that Craigslist doesn't claim to own.
Specifically how is Padmapper competing with Craigslist? How would such a mechanism not also apply to Google News, reddit, HN and various news sites? Is a "search bar" extension in Firefox competing with Google?
Yes, but this can't reasonably include the material facts concerning the listing: how many bedrooms, the rental amount, the street and cross street. The data I just mentioned and the relationship between them is not something that Craigslist could reasonably own even if they did ask for exclusivity.
