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.

Comments

it's stupid, but I don't think as strong as that

[Trepidity]

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.

Theory versus Reality

[mr1911]

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.

Re:That's not what it says

[king neckbeard]

The obvious solution would be to post the derivative work on Craigslist, with the original everywhere else.