Vertical Search Engines and Copyright

An anonymous reader writes "I am a big fan of Oodle, the online classifieds aggregator. I was disheartened when Craigslist announced that they would block Oodle from their site in late 2005 (old link), as I find their service very handy. I came across this page at the site of an aggregator of freelance job openings that summarizes the arguments around the legality of meta search engines and mashup-like sites and I found myself wondering if Oodle could have avoided the ban. There is an interesting argument there that seems to undermine copyright claims of user-generated content compilations. Are mashups legal? How does this affect sites like Digg or YouTube?"

Comments

Re:Content Aggregation and Mashups

[__aaabsi3154]

I'm glad you don't care where or how the aggregation happens, but who is going to pay the bills? If you use Amazon to find local books, what does Amazon get out of it? I think the real winner will not be the person who first creates all this aggregation, but the person who does it all in a way that allow profits to be shared.

But this sharing is where problems arise, as everyone thinks they're entitled to a larger share of the cash than the next person...

Ughhh, I can't freaking stand "mashup"!

[Otter]

I found myself wondering if Oodle could have avoided the ban.

If I'm understanding correctly, craigslist has terms of service, and Oodle was systematically violating them. That's their right, whether there's a formal copyright violation or not.

I'd never heard of Oodle, but craigslist is notoriously easygoing and their terms (you can run searches but not mirror the whole damn thing) seem reasonable, so I think the way Oodle could have avoided the ban is by not pissing Craig off.