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

That's not what it says

[Anonymous Coward]

They are claiming exclusivity to the content not intent. Change your verbiage when you post to eBay and you're good.

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.

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.

Craigslist is a shithole

[SuperBanana]

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...

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.

I don't think this is legally valid

[TheSpoom]

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.

Don't post the original to Craigslist

[DM9290]

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.