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Craigslist Demands Exclusivity For Postings
Bill Dimm writes "Craigslist now demands an exclusive license to the content you post there. How many people are aware that they are agreeing not to post their job ads, rentals, items for sale, etc. anywhere else when they post to Craigslist?"
It's not going out on much a limb to suspect this is to strengthen Craigslist's position against those extension sites they love so much.
They are claiming exclusivity to the content not intent. Change your verbiage when you post to eBay and you're good.
It's pretty clearly giving them an exclusive copyright license, with explicit authority to enforce your copyright, probably intended to remove any doubt a judge may have that they're allowed to sue sites that scrape/republish Craigslist. And since it's exclusive, this probably does mean that you're not allowed to copy/paste the same ad onto multiple sites, since you've exclusively licensed your ad to Craigslist. Which is pretty dumb, although I would put good odds on them not enforcing that, since the timing indicates it's aimed at the sites that scrape Craigslist wholesale, not random individuals.
I don't read it as giving them complete exclusivity rights for the underlying rental/sale, though. There isn't any language saying you agree not to list the item on another site simultaneously, so I believe (while obviously IANAL) that you could write up a separate ad for another site if you wanted.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
As someone currently trying to find a place to live - craigslist is a shithole. Everything except the by-owner apartment section is just horrible, with realtors keyword spamming and posting the same ads multiple times a day; nobody flags them. Age/gender/orientation/class discrimination is rampant and uncontrolled (in my particular neighborhood, you have to be late-20's, GLBT or female, and a grad student, or nobody wants to live with you or have you as a tenant.) It's also firmly stuck around 1996 technology. The searching sucks. The new photo gallery sucks (makes printing or PDF-saving an ad difficult.) They still don't do any kind of validation on the address fields, which makes apartment/room hunting a nightmare because people can't seem to handle "enter nearest cross-streets" 50% of the time. Up until recently they were profiteering off the sex industry (which uses human trafficking) and fought bitterly when the state attorneys went after them for it. About the only two things CL has going for it: pages are served reasonably fast, and the site doesn't go down very often. Really, guys: there's a REASON WHY sites like Padmapper and others exist...
Please help metamoderate.
In theory this gives Craigslist the ability to enforce a copyright claim against the original poster for listing an ad elsewhere. In reality any such enforcement would be the end of Craigslist.
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I'll grant they'll never be stupid enough to go after an individual for publishing an ad they've written on Craigslist and another site. I agree this is a move against extension sites.
But we're starting to see that Craigslist isn't the little humble site it used to claim to be.
So, why have none of the other forsale sites caught on? I realize Craigslist is popular because Craigslist is popular, but then again, so was MySpace.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Half the posts on the "craigslist extensions" sites are outdated/deleted already anyways.
I 3 craigslist, found two roommates, multiple apartments/houses, bicycles, computers, cars, telescopes... currently looking for a piano on there.
moox. for a new generation.
Yeah, good luck enforcing that.
By reading this post you agree to give me exclusive rights to any patentable ideas you ever come up with, in perpetuity throughout the universe, and at any time in the past should time travel become possible.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Now it's the site everyone else uses. (And don't do the "I don't use it" thing, you know what I mean.)
I hope this is more a response to web sites that scrape Craigslist listings and put them up on fake blogs for search engines to find. When I make a Craigslist posting, I don't intend on my photos and contact information to be copied on some Malaysian or Russian site, and hopefully this will give Craigslist ammo to get these sites taken down by now having copyright or license to the content that is posted there.
So how would you have worded something to go after web sites that scrape CL without making it something to go after the original poster?
I make a nice piece of change off of CL and have found lots of good things there, too. I think it's one of the few business models that is innocuous and beneficial and they should be left alone by predators and usurpers like those extension sites.
www.chihuahuarescue.com- Help to end dog abuse, abandonment and cruelty
That's insane. I've used Craigslist quite a lot for various things, but I'm not about to give them (or anyone else who hasn't hired me to produce something for them) exclusive rights to anything whatsoever.
So, I guess Craigslist effectively no longer exists for me. I'm not angry or upset with CL about this, merely disappointed that they've made their TOS so unacceptable to me that I can't use them. I can't wait for the service that comes to replace it!
you could write up a separate ad for another site if you wanted
It explicitly prohibits preparing derivative works without Craigslist's consent. IANAL, so I don't know if they could enforce that against the original author, but it seems they could certainly go after whatever other website published/distributed your derivative post. Since that other website's Terms of Use would probably require you to post only things that you legally have the right to post, you could presumably wind up with them coming after you if Craigslist comes after them.
By reading this post you agree to return to me any rights you may have held to any patentable ideas I have every come up with or will, and offer to me the right to purchase your own for no more than 5 USD. This agreement supersedes any, past, present or future and is irrevocable, in this universe and any other, in perpetuity.
Also, puppies.
It's not a derivative work unless it's based on the original (in other words, if you modified the Craigslist ad). If you wrote another ad from scratch for the same item, it's not a derivative work.
Two different listings for a $30 mattress that aren't identical would not necessarily be "derivative works" though, just parallel works. I mean, you can't copyright the idea of selling a mattress for $30; the only copyright Craigslist would be gaining would be on the specific text of a specific ad.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Honestly, I've had pretty decent luck on the site. I buy shitbox cars and resell them fairly often. I also got a HUGE collection of Matco tools. Just ignore the "This item still for sale?" emails and I really don't have an issues. I also clearly label in my ads "CASH ONLY". /shrug
I bet they do enforce it on an individual basis against other sites; this allows them to maintain a monopoly position on online classifieds with legal force. All they need is a bot to look for their content and an automated DMCA system.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Sure, but how do you prove that it is written from scratch, especially when there would need to be a high degree of similarity when describing the same item? For example, a job ad is going to contain a list of qualifications -- how are you going to advertise the same job without copying the list of qualifications?
Only the expressive elements, not the functional/utilitarian ones, are subject to copyright -- so the necessary similarity doesn't count against you in a copyright case, and highly functional language is by nature less protected.
Much the same way that while all English-language novels use the same words, it's their arrangement that governs their uniqueness. Craigslist isn't trying to prevent posters from selling their items on other sites; they're trying to prevent scrapping sites from re-posting content and selling ads to support that.
What's stopping you from changing up your advertisement a bit on different websites? You put up a specific advertisement that they own the rights to? So change a few words, leave some details out, add some different details. No problem. You'd probably end up doing that anyway to cater to the specific medium you're advertising on.
Unless they put fake ads in there to prove they are derivative - just like the GPS makers and their fake roads to nowhere.
... the world's foremost content provider of dickpicks.
I've changed apartments twice in the last year. When Padmapper was using Craigslist, it worked brilliantly and I loved it. Now that it doesn't, I was forced to go back to Craigslist proper, as the other rental sites don't have nearly the same volume of listings, making Padmapper pretty much useless.
That was disappointing to me, but I guess Craigslist won if they kept me coming back. I wish they could find a way to play nice.
Clicking "Continue" confirms that craigslist is the exclusive licensee of this content, with the exclusive right to enforce copyrights against anyone copying, republishing, distributing or preparing derivative works without its consent.
Is this legally enough for Craigslist? Wouldn't they need a full copyright assignment in order to pursue copyright infringement claims?
I bet if questioned in court, such a claim would be thrown out due to lack of standing, since copyright ownership would belong to the writer of the post, not with Craigslist. After all, that was the reasoning that killed Righthaven when they tried to make a similar deal with their newspaper clients.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Craigslist rnr across the country has been a great place to read and collaborate on creative stuff. Great (and awful) stuff has been coming out of it for years because it's totally uncensored and unmoderated (for the most part). I'm not sure I would feel the same way about using it if I had to assign sole copyright ownership and enforcement powers to Craigslist. This really gives me pause.
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If they own the copyright... doesn't that also give them liability for defamation? That couldn't be good for them. What the hell are they thinking?
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What if you release your copyright? For example, in your post you write, "The author of this advert has released all content within this page to the public domain. In case this is not legally possible, the creator grants anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law."
Sure, CL would have a license, but the license would be worthless. Since most cases, copyrighting, "Hey I need a roommate" is pointless, I see no bad side for retaining your rights.
Can someone with more lawyer points provide insight?
We don't live in Shouldland.
Ebay absolutely does not own craigslist. They own a minority share of it and have zero power to "kill it"
The housing section is appalling. It is so bad that crazed customers are forced to counter-spam just to fight back against the spammers. There are many instances of duplicate ads numbering in the 100s, and the only thing craigslist has done is set a feeble timeout function for the particular advertisers. There are also many ads which are unique, but are little more than external links to more spam.
One group of spammers/scammers lists hundreds of housing ads per month with clearly erroneous images showing, for example, heavy snow in Florida. They also like to trick people into credit reports, which they go to elaborate measure to accomplish. I traced them to the Netherlands, gathered all the other info I could and sent it to a particular handle at craigslist.com after sending it to the FBI too. Craigslist replied acknowledging the issue, but never did anything about it. The FBI never replied.
Something really did needed to change, but I doubt this new TOS will have any positive effect. Craigslist started as something truly fantastic, but which avoided things like redundant taxation. I guess it went sour when people began murdering people and such. Though I sometimes wonder if in its earlier stages it wasn't enough of a threat to certain groups that it was passively attacked. My conclusion is that it remains useful as a service, but has generally gone to shit.
PS: handle = jim
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
except that even in acting like you give them the copyright, fair use nullifies all of this - as almost any use of the listings that involves modifying them is a clear cut case of fair use.
Craiglist should be careful what it wishes for! They should be in talks with PadMapper et. al. so it doesn't get caught painfully obsolete.
How difficult could it be to slap some lipstick on that terrible design? Obviously their layout is not what distinguishes them so I think a great Kickstarter project could find some funding to create a Craiglist replacement that would bring it to the 21 century.
Some endorsements, some marketing and a more fit competitor could be born very easily.
So who's in?
If they are going to claim they are owners of the content of a post, doesn't this make them liable for the post's content? They voluntarily took down the 'Adult Services' ads for PR purposes, but they were never liable for any of the goings on there because they claimed that they don't own the content and they don't review each ad. But now if they're claiming they own the copyright on the ad, then doesn't that defense go out the window? Doesn't seem like a worthwhile trade-off to me.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Put your images up in the cloud and just link to them in the craigslist post...so that they render in the craigslist page without the reader having to click through. This is how I generally post to craigslist anyways.
I don't really care if craigslist wants to try to own my text; but I definitely wouldn't want them to get rights to photos I took of my own stuff.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
We'll find out the answer to that question after the Samsung vs Apple suit is over. :)
IANAL, but can't you just get around this by calling yourself a search engine and falling back on the DMCA's safe harbor rules?
"Introducing myBlock, the web's first completely physically aware search engine, powered by Google! Search for terms that apply to you and get results that apply to your city, town, or state... all visually displayed using Google Maps technology! We're still in beta, but we're growing every day.
"We currently crawl and index up to... [1]... pages! Stay tuned for more!"
Granted, you could catch flack for not obeying robots.txt (which you aren't legally required to do, and which these sites already probably avoid anyway). It's probably also a good idea to see what you can do to establish a business relationship with Google (read: pay them something) to avoid having the rug pulled out from under you on the mapping front. But otherwise, is there even a bar for what legally constitutes a search engine?
If I have an original X (and all the rights), and make a copy X' and upload X' to you and give you exclusive rights to X', that will let you decide how X' is copied or distributed, but it doesn't say anything about any rights on the original X.
"this content" in the Craiglist agreement refers to the content which you UPLOADED, not the original from where you derived it. this agreement only really prevents you or someone else from downloading your ad from Craiglist and republishing it without their permission. And it ensures Craiglist can publish that material anywhere they want. It doesn't prevent you from continuing to use your originals and make copies of your originals.
The original is NOT the content which you uploaded, even if it looks the same.
The original is the original, and as it is worded, the agreement does not mention anything about you giving craigslist any rights over the original. It only refers to "this content" which means whatever you post to craiglist -- not more than that.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
About as slimy as you can get.
I believe that deal they cut with eBay years ago, whereby they got a huge wad of cash, was so that they would NOT EVER innovate or improve buying/selling features of their site. I believe they got paid off to keep their interface crappy.
So these extension sites come along and try to fill the gaps with the terrible interface and they get sued.
And the EFF has awarded CL in the past for their "community" contributions. What a bunch of BS! I would love to see CL lose their monopolies and see a more open playing field.
Everytime I looked for a job on there I would show up and the job was nothing like it was described as. Ive had multiple places bring people in groups to have more of a speech about why they are a great place and then send them all home to make it feel more like they were just tricking people to come in for a commercial. Every single job I looked for on there was a complete waste of my time.
The "dating" area is just full of spam bots and guys trying to get other guys to have sex with them and the few real women are pretentious, snobby bitches or just women "looking for some help" which translates into they are whores wanting money.
The buy/sell area is a joke as well as most people want huge amounts of money for complete garbage or they just scream "Come meet me in this parking lot to buy what Im selling so I can rob you". Hell I gave some stuff away in the free section and people still giving me shit about getting something free.
Id never messed with the other areas of CL but from my experince that place is a shit hole.
Craigslist: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.
I don't know that. Nor does anyone else. Nor do you apparently. eBay owns under 25% of CL.
PS. I don't have any problems using either. Moreover, I find both very easy to use. I must be doing something wrong. Alternatively, I might just have a functioning brain.
So all these sites have to do is use a thesaurus program to swap out certain words and they're good?
IANAL, but can't you just get around this by calling yourself a search engine and falling back on the DMCA's safe harbor rules?
No, the safe harbor provision doesn't work that way.
"craigslist zen" is going a step too far when they exert effort to prevent other people from improving their dipshit website. For the good of all society, they need to get bought out by somebody competent to run the operation, and that won't happen until Newmark is out of the way.
I only ever went there to read the "Best Of" section anyway, and not even that in recent years. No great loss.
"Do the words "go to hell" mean anything to them?"
Nope. Closest they have Ann Arbor.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
As someone posting to a free site to advertise my good, service, or need, I DO NOT wish to revoke the right of others to spread that word around.
It was 25% at the beginning, but eBay now owns 28% of CL for a couple of years since then.
CL is a FOR-PROFIT corporation since 2000. Yes, since 2000. I have no idea why people still think it is a non-profit corp.
True, but that's where a power imbalance typical of network-effects markets appears: any single individual may need Craigslist more than Craigslist needs them.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I believe the reason for this is that certainweekly or daily publications will reprint ads from craiglist. The small buisiness I work for was subject to a lawsuit brought by the city of New York after a local weekly reprinted an ad from craiglist for a hostess, as a opposed to a host, or host person, or host body, or some other irrelavent jackassery. If this had been in place we wouldn't have had to settle for $3000, and continue to encourage the city to discourage small businesses.
Its pretty clearly claiming that it requires that, but since in US law an exclusive copyright license (even if limited in time or scope of the rights under copyright licensed) is a transfer of copyright ownership, and a transfer of copyright ownership requires a written transfer document signed by the transferring owner or a duly authorized agent, so, if its a usual Terms of Service and not a signed written document, they probably don't actually have any license other than whatever a court would find is implied by posting without a valid agreement.
Use gumtree instead. I used it when moving back to the states from the UK to sell most of my crap, and it was great. In contrast, when using CL to sell our car when we left to go to the UK, we nearly got scammed (cashiers checks and money orders aren't any safer than taking personal checks, take cash on the barrel or nothing. CarMax is your friend, but I digress), and when we came back, CL was such a shithole that we gave up trying to find used furniture like the stuff we sold.
gumtree is so much better in every way..better interface, better user experience, better everything. Except that in the US people cling to the Neandrathalic Craigslist, so the networking effect pushes everyone back into the shithole ... which come to think of it is a great metaphor for much of the country's mentality *cough* teabaggers *cough*, but again, I digress...
Off-topic but FWIW, I volunteer for a dog rescue and Craigslist has been a godsend. It has become enormously successful for recovering a lost pet or getting a stray back to it's owner. Posting a stray in Lost and Found is the first and best thing to do. And beyond the obvious benefits of reunion for pets and owners, it has reduced intake at the shelters. That increases the length of time the animals who do go in get to be adopted as animals are often put down for space. It also reduces the number of animals exposed to infectious diseases which are routinely present in shelters. Please don't toss Craigslist so quickly.
Of course not. That's clearly a job for a business method patent.
Doesn't really matter, now does it? There's enough ambiguity that Craigslist could drag you to court and keep the case going for a while. Even if they'd lose eventually, it would cost you enough time and money to bankrupt Joe Average, thus making it an effective blackmail tool.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"It was 25% at the beginning, but eBay now owns 28% of CL for a couple of years since then."
You might be right. I just remember that eBay sued CL alleging 10% stock dilution. So I thought their share is less than 25% now.