... the postings in question are public facts about exchanges. Just as any price/supply/demand in a marketplace is open for any and all to notate and republish, so too is the entire set of Craigslist data -- as these offers between seekers and providers are clearly in the public domain.
But public facts are public property.
Are they though? In the absence of any terms that specify otherwise, I would expect to retain copyright over anything I post to Craigslist. To play devil's advocate, maybe I wrote a literary masterpiece or uploaded some great photos trying to sell my [random item] - just because I put them on Craigslist doesn't mean I'm releasing them into the public domain. For whatever reason, I may want to retain control over my post, and only give permission to Craigslist to use it.
To take this "public domain" argument to the extreme, does this mean any pictures I put up on Craigslist can be used royalty-free by anyone for any purpose, forever? That's absurd.
Edit: most of the arguments here seem to be around whether Craigslist owns the listings, but I think that's missing the point. The user owns the listing, and none of the aggregators have any way to get the users' consent before reusing their listings. In most cases, yes, of course I'm happy to have my listing show up on aggregators and increase its exposure, but that's not really the point - the point is end users have no control over it.
> does this mean any pictures I put up on Craigslist can be used royalty-free by anyone for any purpose
I think what he's saying is, that the fact that you are publicly selling your picture is in the public domain, a public fact about the economy, and unmonopolizable by any one private subject.
They can be linked to royalty-free forever, because the "publisher" is the server hosting the data.
Even if they did copy and host the image themselves, they would be liable but still be okay because the burden is on the user who owns the data to file a DMCA takedown notice for that content. The worst Craigslist could do here is inform the users (who own the content) that their listing is being shown on Site X and provide a link to the page where the user can file a takedown notice. I don't know about you, but I probably would be happy that the listing is getting more exposure on more sites. I think most users would.
Markets are natural monopolies. Liquidity begets liquidity. The breaking down of these silos is a great thing for price discovery and a better functioning market. The creation of decentralized markets where all listings are available and discoverable is really only a matter of time. When that happens buy and sell offers will be fully free and the idea of a centralized site with free listings like Craigslist will be a quaint notion and we'll all be better off because of it.
But public facts are public property.
Are they though? In the absence of any terms that specify otherwise, I would expect to retain copyright over anything I post to Craigslist. To play devil's advocate, maybe I wrote a literary masterpiece or uploaded some great photos trying to sell my [random item] - just because I put them on Craigslist doesn't mean I'm releasing them into the public domain. For whatever reason, I may want to retain control over my post, and only give permission to Craigslist to use it.
To take this "public domain" argument to the extreme, does this mean any pictures I put up on Craigslist can be used royalty-free by anyone for any purpose, forever? That's absurd.
Edit: most of the arguments here seem to be around whether Craigslist owns the listings, but I think that's missing the point. The user owns the listing, and none of the aggregators have any way to get the users' consent before reusing their listings. In most cases, yes, of course I'm happy to have my listing show up on aggregators and increase its exposure, but that's not really the point - the point is end users have no control over it.