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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.
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
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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craigslist was a technological shithole when I last went apartment shopping in the mid 2000s.
amazingly it now looks and works... exactly the same?
I guess they're getting their money's worth out of that "beginning html" book?
Old handyman's adage:
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Also, Occam's Razor.
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As someone currently trying to find a place to live - craigslist is a shithole.
CL is pretty bad, except when compared to the alternatives.
Age/gender/orientation/class discrimination is rampant and uncontrolled
If they are advertising for a tenant, then discrimination on age/gender is illegal, and CL will take down offending ads if you report them. If they are advertising for a roommate/boarder (someone who shares the same living space) then this discrimination is perfectly legal in many jurisdictions. Discrimination for/against GLBT tenants may or may not be illegal depending on the jurisdiction.
It's also firmly stuck around 1996 technology.
There is nothing wrong with that. 1996 technology is perfectly adequate for what CL is doing.
The searching sucks.
Use Google, and put "site:craigslist.org" as one of your search criteria.
Up until recently they were profiteering off the sex industry (which uses human trafficking)
One of the main reasons for abuse in the sex industry (including human trafficking), is that it is a hidden black market. By helping to make it more open and competitive, CL was arguably making it less abusive. I think it is unfair to blame CL for a problem created by politicians.
Only one thing? Maybe the fact that in most cases (there are select areas where it's illegal to post ads without the company verifying all the information is accurate) you don't have to pay a dime to post a classified ad. Maybe you would prefer the old world of newspaper classifieds where you paid $70 for a single weekend listing AND the newspaper did no copy control.
Craigslist doesn't charge money, they don't generally interfere in postings and there is little to no advertising (there is spam, as should be expected on any free site).
Those are all the positives, Craig has also promised that he'll never take advertising and that hes not ever going to charge for listing where he isn't forced to by local laws. Again a positive. Now you want the guy to spend more of his own money to make the site "flashy" so his bandwidth costs you aren't paying go up for no clear benefit for anyone. Good plan, why don't you send him the million bucks that will cost and maybe he'll consider it.
The obvious solution would be to post the derivative work on Craigslist, with the original everywhere else.
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