Craigslist Drops Exclusive License To Your Posts

First time accepted submitter Penurious Penguin writes "Last week Craigslist demanded exclusive license to the content you post there, an odd demand which would have prevented ad-content on Craigslist from being advertised anywhere else but Craigslist. Thankfully, today we read from the EFF, the Good News: Craigslist drops exclusive license to your posts. From the article: 'For many years, craigslist has been a good digital citizen. Its opposition to SOPA/PIPA was critically important, and it has been at the forefront of challenges to Section 230 and freedom of expression online. We understand that craigslist faces real challenges in trying to preserve its character and does not want third parties to simply reuse its content in ways that are out of line with its user community’s expectations and could be harmful to its users. Nevertheless, it was important for craigslist to remove the provision because claiming an exclusive license to the user’s posts--to the exclusion of everyone, including the original poster--would have harmed both innovation and users’ rights, and would have set a terrible precedent. We met with craigslist to discuss this recently and are pleased about their prompt action.'"

Comments

Easier way to fix it

[houstonbofh]

The best way to solve the "problem" of other people using their data, is to fix their own search tools. Hell, just being able to search all locations within 100 miles would be nice. All these other websites pop up because there own presentation is so bad.

Re:Citation needed for liability difference

[pdabbadabba]

Lawyer here. GP seems correct to me (though this is largely outside my area of expertise) -- being the license holder of content (for copyright purposes) is simply an entirely different concept from having liability deriving from the creation or publication of the content. I don't know of a statute or case to cite for this proposition, but I wouldn't expect there to be any, just like I don't expect there to be case law explaining the difference between murder and kidnapping.

The reason is that either liability will have come from having posted the materials (for example, because making the post will itself be a material step in the commission of a crime), or being a publisher of the materials (this is true in traditional libel law, though websites like craigslist are usually protected by statutory safe harbors). In the former cases, Craigslist would not be liable regardless of who had what license to publish the material. In the latter case they would always have been liable. In either case, the terms of the copyright license change nothing. I am aware of no species of liability that attaches to becoming the exclusive licensee of copyrighted materials (someone may be able to come up with something, but it would have to be pretty obscure).