It's not very standard. The standard text in a UGC site's terms is to grant a non-exclusive license to the submitted content, and does not grant the sole rights to enforce the copyright in that content. This text on the submission form is both new and non-standard; it doesn't even agree with what's in their TOS document.
An exclusive license means landlords themselves are giving up their right to post the same listing on other rental listing sites, for example, by using a tool that would post the exact same listing to multiple sites.
Does this license mean copyright? In Germany you cannot protect facts with copyright. Something like "Flat for rent: $size m², $price €, $coordinates, $link" seems more like a fact or an idea.
You can't protect facts with copyright anywhere, AFAIK. The listing consists of more than facts, including a descriptive title, the descriptive text of the listing, and the attached images. These are all protected. At the moment, PadMapper does not copy any of these things. It's been pointed out. Let's not rehash what's already been said ad nauseum in the PadMapper story comments and stick to discussing this submission.
I did not mean to change the subject. This measure just seems ineffective at stopping PadMapper. But it seems like it will stop people from posting their ads elsewhere.
I'm not sure that a title or short description would be copyrightable "a work must meet minimal standards of originality in order to qualify for copyright"
The photographs however would be covered by copyright.
Yes, becuse if you grant someone exclusive rights then you need to possess those exclusive rights in the first place. If the material is not protectable, then you don't have any rights to grant to others.
I don't think that copyright for photographs would be covered by the Craigslist claim though:
'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.'
I have an original photo and publish it as part of a listing ('the content'). The photo is not a derivative work.
> 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.'
> I have an original photo and publish it as part of a listing ('the content'). The photo is not a derivative work.
No, but if someone uses that photo (from the listing) to make something else, that something else is a derivative work, and thus covered by the craigslist license.
I suspect that the craigslist wording isn't intended to be restricted to derivative works. That is, I think that they meant to include content as is in addition to derived work from said content.
It's a bit more complicated: We don't have copyright as the americans do, it's split in "Urheberrecht" which is the part the the creator owns and cannot license or sell and the "Verwertungsrecht" which is the right to use the work.
Urheberrecht encompasses thing such as the right do defend against modifications that go against the spirit of the work or the author or against defacing it, the right to be named as the creator (though this one can be waived by contract depending on the circumstance) etc. The Urheberrecht can only be transferred by inheritance.
The Verwertungsrechte is anything related to the use of the work, such as selling, buying, (sub)licensing it.
Please keep in mind that this is a gross oversimplification and IANAL. The copyright situation is complicated enough for experts in the field and cannot be explained in a short post I guess :)
I would be surprised if an author really wanted to do such a thing. The authors I know would be livid if a publisher, say, changed the ending. Publishers typically get the right to publish, and that's it. Opening a few books from my library randomly, the authors or their heirs all hold the copyright.
Nice, you take the time to craft your listing on craigslist and now you've lost the right to repost your listing ANYWHERE else. I think we can safely assume that craigslist has a monopoly in (free) online classifieds and this reeks of very anti-competitive behavior. Wonder what the DOJ thinks of this.
This is a bit knee-jerk, no? I highly doubt you waive the right to repost your listing ANYWHERE; rather, this is legalese allowing them to sue anyone using their listings without consent.
Read the text. Exclusive license. That means you may not license your post to any other site; giving someone else permission to display your listing is a grant of a license, and such a license is explicitly mentioned in the terms of any UGC site, including Craigslist. The difference is those other terms always say NON-exclusive. Go ahead and stop by YouTube and do a search for the word.
Hard to see the day when craigslist tries to sue posters for this "violation"; so effectively posters can ignore this legalese as it's targeted to give craiglist ammunition against other sites.
To be fair, consumer organisations here in Holland once took 25 EULA's to a judge.
Less than 1% of what was stated would ever be held up in a dutch court. Things like the concept that a company can just define their liabilty themselves. Or how they have the right to share personal data with 3rd parties. The laws can not overwritten with contracts, esspecially ones without signatures.
In essence, and this was quite funny to realize. There is no EULA that would reduce liability, or increase rights of the seller. An EULA can really only be used against the company.
Im not sure about the situation in the US. But the same should be true to some extend. EULA are fake legal documents lawyers sell as if they have any value.
You are right. Although it comes down to the same thing. They are all just synonyms for contracts. ( a liscene is just a type of contract )
And this could very well be a good example of the 1% that would actually be uphold.
If they had your signature, that is. Getting exclusive content liscence without explicit permission? They cant even prove it was you that submitted the content in the first place.
Imagine a store having a sign that they own your bag, whenever you enter. Come on, this will not hold up in court.
Compare certain opensoure companies that require contributions to assign copyright to them. They all demand a real piece of paper, with a real signature.
When a user posts, they are representing that the content is theirs. If the real owner of the content posts somewhere else, that CL would have a claim against the fraudulent poster, not the actual creator. Either way, these contracts do hold up in court.
> Im not sure about the situation in the US. But the same
> should be true to some extend.
My understanding is that it's not true to much of any extent in the US. The contract will generally win. It'll depend on the jurisdiction and the case, but it's certainly not the case that all EULAs are per se invalid. Nor is it the case that "the laws cannot be overwritten with contracts." Overwriting the legal default rules is what contracts do.
Only if those legal "default" rules, are specified as "default"
A good example is rape. It does not make sex illegal, it just makes consent a requirement. There is no analogue for murder, so event consent would not allow murder.
Thats the extend of such liscences: they can ask consent for things that require consent. But most of them are filled with stuff that either does not require consent, or where consent is irrelevent.
But when i hear about the type of frivolent lawsuits, i do believe at least liability is defined very differently. Here companies are not liable for misuse by idiots. If an average person understands you can not microwave your cat, then there is no liability when an idiot does that. On the other hand, companies can not distance themselves from being liable for harm due to defects.
Either case, legal terms are not very relevant either way. Because they do not constitute a proper effort of informing. That last part is very relevant. Implicit terms can not define the context, only try to formalize it.
Is it that simple? If the license that those sites have is invalid - and it would be - then they're committing copyright infringement, and CL has an explicit license to go after those.
The copyright is still with the post author; Craigslist is not asking for it to be transferred. The author still has the ability to license the content to the other sites. In doing so, they breach the agreement with Craigslist saying their license was exclusive. So it's simple breach of contract between the listing author and CL; the other site has done no wrong and is not a party to the breach.
IOW: This text gives Craigslist some ammo to go after a site they can prove got the listing from copying Craigslist, but not sites the listing author also posted to.
Operationally, probably true. However, ethically this is no different than the people who said PadMapper should just use "Craigslist's" data regardless of what Craigslist thought about the situation. To be consistent, either you believe:
1) It's ok for PadMapper to re-list Craigslist's data without Craigslist's consent.
OR
2) If you post a housing listing to Craigslist, you cannot post it anywhere else.
If CraigsList ever went after a poster who also posted their classified on another site, that would probably be the day they begin to unravel.
You don't want to instill fear into posters (IE, their product) that they could get sued by posting even a similar ad on a competing site. Then you enter the territory "I only have access to people who check craigslist" instead of an array of additional, complementary options. That doesn't sound very attractive.
Right, I don't think they would ever sue their own users. But the point is that you don't get to simply ignore parts of an agreement that you don't agree with, because "that's not what they meant". So the people who were saying that PadMapper has no right to use Craigslist's data should be careful not to submit to multiple listing services if they ever put a house up for rent on Craigslist, if they care at all about consistent application of their principles.
Padmapper scraping data put up on CraigsList and adding it to their own listings is very very different than me putting my own listing on multiple sites.
I don't see this as a "application of principles" issue. The principle I'm consistently applying is "I have the right to tell whomever I want about something I want to sell." And Craigslist is applying the consistent principle that the listing I provided belongs to them. If you ask me, putting my listing somewhere else makes it a different listing, because it didn't originate at craigslist (Like stolen listings on PadMapper), but instead, originated through me.
To apply my principle consistently, I wouldn't post a link to my Craigslist posting on another site, but I am perfectly entitled to re-post its content where-ever I please.
The new agreement says that by posting on Craigslist, you give them an exclusive license to the content. You can't give them an exclusive license and then turn around and give the content to someone else.
If CraigsList ever went after a poster who also posted their classified on another site, that would probably be the day they begin to unravel.
You don't want to instill fear into posters (IE, their product) that they could get sued by posting even a similar ad on a competing site. Then you enter the territory "I only have access to people who check craigslist" instead of an array of additional, complementary options. That doesn't sound very attractive.
EDIT: Okay, let me be less flippant. I ask about you being a lawyer because we don't know how Craigslist will enforce this policy. Everyone is assuming the worst -- CL will not let you post anywhere else! -- when, in practice, such a policy is probably not enforceable in court.
You have a well-reasoned comment, sure, but someone can't really speak to the enforceability of this without practicing law.
Whatever the agenda behind pushing this might be, the "legalese" has real implications IRL. You don't own the content of your listings anymore if you post on craigslist - so you're going to be liable if you're going to use any of the content elsewhere (including pictures).
That might technically be true but that clearly isn't the intent here. Craigslist is not going to be suing their users for copy/pasting the same listing across multiple sites...
This is clearly directed to services like Padmapper - which, by the way, I strongly support and wish Craigslist would leave TF alone.
But it will be suing those sites. So If you have a site where people can put their advertisements you better look if they haven't posted same advertisement on craigslist and when they do don't publish it on your site.
Of course you can just slap the same lawyer silliness on your form and claim that you have also been given exclusive licence by your users and counter sue craigslist. I'm not sure if court is required to resolve the matter if you both have identical claims. Not sure if who got their "exclusive" licence first matters anything in such case.
Actually, if you do the cross-posting, Craigslist would be entitled to sue you for violating their exclusivity agreement, not the other site. What this would put on a poster is the extra work to make the copyrightable content different between sites.
I agree on that. Likely they may consider banning you from posting for violating their terms of service. I was just trying to refute that if users cross-posted, they, and not the site to which they posted would be in violation of the agreement.
Banning probably would be another PR no-no, as it might bring their recent "legal" stunt to public attention. One thing is to write something in the fine print at the bottom of the form on your website to help your lawyers get out of the place that they cornered themselves into. Another is persecuting your users for not obeying something so obviously stupid that most people would consider it a typo.
Exclusive license means exactly what it says. You are giving Craigslist essentially full copyright ownership over your listing. The only exception is that in moral rights jurisdictions you aren't giving them moral rights.
It's not anti-competitive any more than a book publisher not allowing you to serialize your novel in some other company's publication.
No one is forcing anyone to use Craigslist. You are free not to post and free to not agree to those terms. Why should a publisher (which is what CL is) grant non exclusive rights? It's a business. If you don't like the terms, you aren't forced to sign the contract. You can always post a newspaper ad, or start your own site. Just because CL has the user base doesn't mean that they are preventing competitors from entering the market any more than Stephen King's publisher is stopping other writers from writing and publishing novels. Stephen King is well known and sells lots of books, but that's not a monopoly, it's a competitive advantage.
Should all companies be forced to give up their competitive advantage to make it easier for competition? Of course not. Competitors need to create their own advantage. It's like suggesting that FB has a monopoly on social simply because they have the most users. You can start your own. Facebook (and CL) aren't preventing users from visiting your site, nor are they preventing sellers from writing a different post for a different site. They're claiming rights to the specific ad posting. It's exactly like the publishing industry.
This anger seems to stem directly from Padmapper blatantly stealing CL data and acting as if it was perfectly fine. I'm no fan of CL, but they have the right to do whatever they want with their data, just as users have the right to not use CL. Don't like the terms, don't do business with them.
The Padmapper guys could take on CL and likely succeed I they had any clue about business development. Instead they spend their time trying to game CL instead of building their own business. If they started hyper locally and focused on a small area or neighborhood, they could easily dominate in that neighborhood with just the cost of some kinkos flyers (assuming they have a great product.) they need only contact landlords in their area, offer to post their ads for free and then flyer the neighborhood advertising 'Park Slope Apartments for Rent' or whatever neighborhood they choose. They'll start to build users. Then they add another neighborhood until eventually they reach critical mass in a specific city. CL took years to get where they were. It takes hard work and getting out from behind the computer screen from time to time. In the rental listings market, the code and UX is easy, the hard work is getting out there and building the business.
I din't get why CL has any obligation to help a competitor short circuit CL's 10+ years of hard work. Do some hard work yourself -- CL is beatable. Look at MySpace: millions of engaged users suffering through a horrid UX, yet they fell to some geographically marketed site called Facebook. You want to build a better CL -- learn from Zuck and Co how they beat MySpace. It's a hell of a lot more than just code.
Bad metaphor. If I make a commercial, am I allowed to run it on more than one television network? Can the TV network say, "you can only run this on our networks?"
I don't know the answer to this question, but I would be annoyed if the network were allowed to lock me in like this. Other networks should be annoyed too.
Should all companies be forced to give up their competitive advantage to make it easier for competition?
Depends on the competitive advantage. Fast code? Theirs. Marketing know-how? Theirs. Monopolistic or illegal practices? Can't keep. Sorry. I definitely disagree with the "companies can do whatever they want" crowd and side with the "you have a business here you play by our rules" crowd.
There's a big difference between a tv ad and a classified ad. The content of CL IS ads. The content of a TV station, ie the competitive differentiator, is based on the quality of its shows, not the ads. If you made a TV show, a network wouldn't allow you to broadcast it on other networks.
Still, CL isn't a public good. Don't like them, turn the channel.
(Sorry I didn't get back to you in a timely fashion)
I see your point but I don't think the difference between TV ads and classified ads is as big as you think it is. In both cases the ad content provider is paying the medium to display the ad. For a TV show, the provider is being paid, and therefore subject to the terms of sale (some shows do show on more than one network, for instance, but not until they are "old" episodes).
In the US there are even some TV stations that spend a major chunk of their time showing commercials ("infomercials"). In these cases content is not a differentiator.
There are also print-based classified-ad (magazines) (Auto-Trader, for example) that don't restrict re-using your ad.
You didn't address the monopoly argument at all. There is behavior that is fine under proper market conditions, but is considered under anti-trust laws to be anti-competitive when one has a monopoly (or near monopoly).
80% market share = monopoly. It varies industry-to-industry, but governments have long recognized that you get many of the monopoly powers before you reach 100%. This is even more true when there are network effects.
Standard Oil only had 64% market share when it was broken up.
Edit (since I can't reply): We aren't expecting a FB breakup for the same reason we don't expect a CL breakup; the US Justice department has been taking a hands-off approach. Given their expertise and the possibility of doing damage, that might be the right approach, but that doesn't mean the monopolies don't exists and aren't doing damage. (Remember, I'm not arguing for a CL breakup, just for the fact that the monopoly exists and must be discussed.) Frankly, I would support a FB breakup, especially if it could lead to an open social-media protocol for federations.
There are plenty of CL competitors. It's just that nobody uses them.
I'll put it this way: do you really think CL has 80% market share because no one can build a better competitor? The site UI is crap.
Should we be expecting a Facebook breakup soon? Sure CL and FB have huge userbases, but how are you determining CL in fact is a monopoly and stifling competition? Or is there no competition because no one is successfully (and legally) trying to start their own CL competitor?
From Wikipedia: "In December 2006, at the UBS Global Media Conference in New York, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster told Wall Street analysts that Craigslist has little interest in maximizing profit, instead it prefers to help users find cars, apartments, jobs, and dates."
Padmapper alone isn't the existential threat. But other well-funded competitors using the same arguments/techniques to offer 'all Craiglist ads, and then more' could be. Hence Craiglist's assertiveness before the principle of reuse is established.
CL has every right to do that, especially since scraping CL listings creates a very high amount of load on their servers. Higher load --> slower response time --> deteriorated user experience.
Did I say they don't have the legal right to do that? No, I didn't. I doubt anybody did.
There's no particular reason to think that spiders are a giant problem for them. Any high-volume site deals with crawlers all the time. If it were a problem because of some site architecture weirdness, it'd be easy enough to set up something that wouldn't be problematic. For example, the RSS feeds they already offer.
Worst case, they could charge people like Padmapper a fee to license the data. Which in fact they already do, but they insist on it being mobile only.
So Craigslist's behavior is purely a business choice, not driven by any technical necessity.
Their argument was at one stage that they can keep most of the site free by keeping their costs way down by having a simple site. The though free & simple was better than fancier for a price or even that the simplicity was good in itself.
For a long time that argument was interesting and seemed to be working. Now it seems to be not working as well.
It may be that technology & UI brought to the table in 2002 would have been a net loss for Craigslist & that in 2007 improvements would have been too small to bother with. In 2012 there is mounting proof that tech & UI have improved enough that the potential improvements are huge.
When the gap between what a big provider is doing and what is possible gets that big, that's economic pressure. It will be felt in all sorts of ways: competition, users trying to access the data via different interfaces, etc.
Tightening up TCs or setting legal precedents is plugging leaks that happened because of the pressure. Not only does plugging leaks not relieve pressure, it increases it.
If they were honestly all about helping people solve their problems, would they really care if it was them providing the solution, someone else building upon their data, or someone else cutting them out of the action?
If they were honestly all about helping people, surely Craigslist would let the market decide what is most helpful to them.
They are letting the market decide.. They just aren't letting people use their content. Craig is a bit of a nut, but it is a business. People are free to use other sites an post ads on other sites. CL isn't stopping them. Even the smallest indie record label would sue if another record company released an album with that label's songs. They may be in it 'for the music' but they aren't going to cut off their own foot or let people shoplift the product, even if the recording quality is bad and the packaging ugly.
It wasn't really their content. And now, though they are claiming exclusivity, it's not really in the interest of their beloved users to claim it as theirs.
And no, people don't appear to be legally free to use other sites as well as Craigslist with the same content they've created.
No, but the content is hosted on their servers. Services scraping this content will hit CL's infrastructure hard. It's actually in the interest of their users to minimize server load, so they can browse listings more quickly.
And no, people don't appear to be legally free to use other sites as well as Craigslist with the same content they've created.
If you're not a lawyer, this is conjecture. We don't know how this will be enforced in the future.
IANAL, of course, but before we all bring out the pitchforks, what does the word "content" mean in
Clicking "Continue" confirms that craigslist is the exclusive licensee of this content
Does it refer, as many posters suggest below, to the item sold in the listing? Or does it only refer to the contents of the listing? If it's the former, I question its legal defensibility (oh man I'm not a lawyer, but I think that's right). If it's the latter, this is a clear pre-emptive move against future PadMapper-type problems.
Saying you have something doesn't really mean you have something - I'm not sure that would stand in court. IANAL, of course, and anything can happen, especially in bizarro world of computerized information where there's no legal practice refined by hundreds of years of common sense applications, so such thing may probably be useful for Craigslist to go after some content scrappers. But I seriously doubt they would ever go after the post owner for reporting his own content.
What's up with their recent change in behavior? Craig's public statements are basically, "Hey, I'm just a customer service guy; talk to the CEO." And as far as I've seen, the CEO has stayed quiet.
If they're worried about losing relevancy to innovators, why not try innovating rather than legal maneuvering?
The best way to play a game of chicken is to publicly tear the steering wheel out of the car. Craig is acting similarly, pretending there is nothing he can do, so you won't complain to him.
This move is against the grain of other sites which accept UGC. It has obviously been moved to the submission page from the main terms of use to attract attention to the clause, in order to increase the chances that Craigslist can rely on it in future.
It will also allow them to argue that subject to compliance with the licence, the information could only have been accessed from CL.
The reality of course is that for a certain number people (perhaps limited) CL will be the only site where the submit content and will therefore not be concerned about granting an exclusive licence.
However, I'm sure a greater percentage of people will not necessarily grasp what Craigslist are asking for here and will not be put off posting elsewhere. Of course, CL will not go around enforcing the terms of the exclusive licence against the user.
The grant of exclusivity will simply allow them to argue that subject to compliance with the licence, the information could only have been accessed from CL, or at least is more likely to have been obtained from CL.
If Craigslist are serious about ensuring they can rely on the exclusive licence it should be made clear that the grant means the user can't post the content anywhere else however this may mean that people would be more put off using the site.
My view is that it's a shame that CL are now attempting to assert an even tighter stranglehold over information originating from users. In the long run it may assist Padmapper in pushing people away from using CL in the first instance.
It's also worth nothing that their terms of use need to be updated to reflect the exclusivity change:
Wow. Under the disguise of a pseudo-charity, Craigslist just revealed it's true intentions. They foolishly just opened themselves up to a lot of hate and possibly gave people a huge reason to try out competitors. This may be the beginning of the end of Craigslist's Empire. This is usually how it starts, users being held hostage, increased control, and decreased satisfaction with the service with no way out due to network effects.
We all believed in Craigslist and this is our reward? WE built up Craigslist to be what it is and now we're held hostage for it? I feel like a fool, why do we keep falling for this? Help the little grow until he becomes king and screws us all.
CL isnt popular here in Holland, but i was under the impression, it was ebay meets dating, using a 200 byte php forum file, that looked so old, you would just assume encodimg errors.
Why are you getting your panties in a twist? What import role does this site play in your life or that of others?
the "ebay meets dating" impression is not correct. Craigslist is closer to an "Online Classified Ads" which is popular for posting jobs, apartment rentals, cars, sporting equipment, musical instruments, and pretty much everything else you might post in a classified ad.
I'm told it is one of the 100 most popular sites on the internet (and one of the 50 most popular in the US).
One of the reasons people feel strongly about it the platform nature. If you don't like the Craigslist interface for finding apartments, you don't have much choice. That is where everyone lists their apartments. Similarly, it is the first place everyone lists apartments because it is widely known that this is where users check.
For that reason, it's been hard for competitors to get any traction... even when the competitor has better technology.
Alright. That sounds very anti competitive. And if they truly have a monopoly likely illegal as well.
I really wish, we had proper laws to deal with all these vendor lockin tricks. Its as if the free market, without proper regulation just ends up promoting innovation in loopholes that give an unfair advantage.
Everyone wants to be a cable company these days, and be selling access to customers. Instead of contributing something of actual value themselves, they just want to tax others when they do. Hijack the customer, and be the middle man.
They all essentially implement the same bussiness model as the mob.
It's not really anti-competitive, and it's very unlikely to be illegal. It's just a fairly classic natural monopoly.
There's only likely to be one major classified ad company, because advertisers want to use the site with the most users, and users want to use the site with the most classified ads. That's hard for a competitor to break into, not because of anticompetitive behavior by Craigslist, but because of the nature of the market.
As for the law, the general rule of thumb, in the US at least, is that it's not illegal to have a monopoly, but it is illegal to use your monopoly to dominate a second market.
I read it as this posting is exclusive. I can make a similar posting somewhere else. Sure, I can't copy-pasta, but if CraigsList thinks that because I post on their site that I can't post it on other sites as well I would LOVE to see them try to sue me.
You cant copy pasta your own content. I totally agree though: this will never hold up in court.
If they want to "own" user submitted content, they need a signature. Just putting some terms up will not suffice, unless the site "sell us your exclusive content" with big "make CL own this content" buttons.
>> it's been hard for competitors to get any traction... even when the competitor has better technology.
This. CraigsList's search features for cars are abysmal. AutoTrader.com, on the other hand, lets you do awesome stuff like "find me a Toyota or Honda sedan costing less than $12,000 within 15 miles of me", save that search, and get email alerts when new matches come in.
But in my market, all the sellers were on Craigslist.
I don't think people outside the US understand how large Craigslist is. I spend 1 hour, each work day, looking at the national OMPL gig feed after its been filtered for charity/stupidity/things I don't do, to see if I can pick up supplemental clients between larger accounts.
The amount of spam and high expectations / low financial reward is high, but a lot of my small business contracts are from Craigslist.
Craigslist is nowhere near that popular. It the largest secondary market for a lot of things, but for more people trade there car back to a dealer than use Craigslist etc.
I don't know about Holland, but CL is HUGE in the U.S, and I mean REALLY HUGE. I've sold stuff, rented apartments etc from CL, because that is where the crowd is. I know of people who use it for everything, and they are very happy. Takes a minute to post the ad, it is free, and even 70 year olds know it.
It is beyond me, why they refuse to improve the service. They could do it one small step at a time, carefully and slowly, so they don't upset their not so tech savvy audience (much of their audience falls in this category)
Things might change soon if they keep behaving this way, but at this moment, no-one comes close to CL (ebay may be, but you can't rent apartments from ebay)
They're changing it to have legal grounds to fend off sites like Padmapper. If they have the exclusive license and another site copies the add and gussies up the display, they have legal grounds to go after the infringing site now. Prior to the explicit issuance of an exclusive license, lawyers for alternative services could make a compelling argument that Craigslist did not assert any license to the content and therefore couldn't legally prevent them from offering a service on top of Craigslist. Adding the copyright license closes that loophole. Now, whether or not an exclusive copyright license is the best way to go is a different question.
Standard IANAL disclaimer.
Edit: replaced copyright with license. Low caffeine morning.
It should also mean though that cross-posting to other sites like Kijiji (very common) could result in having take-down notices sent for your ad (- since it's an exclusive license you're granting them). [IANAL]
You're right. That's where the exclusive vs. non-exclusive copyright license comes into play. I also wonder what this will do to the rentals market. For instance, local realty company lists all their properties on their website and posts them on Craigslist to increase traction. Craigslist now sends the realty company a takedown notice, for the realtor's website listing, since they copied the listing onto CL. Depending on the level of enforcement CL pursues, this could have the effect of cooling professional usage of CL--especially by organizations that have to run things by legal first.
The information that is used to build the ad remains open to be used wherever and whenever the poster wants. I believe this storm is caused by third parties leeching off their ads and not users posting the ad in multiple places. Let's not get too dramatic about it.
Correct, the information remains open--however, how many people are going to go about writing a new ad for each site they post on and make sure it's different enough to avoid triggering someone else's license protection? Reading real estate ads in the area, both on realty websites and Craigslist, they look almost identical.
"BRAND NEW CONDO 1BA 1Br wood floors!!!! sends us an email. $1200/mo!!"
If you take that same ad and post it on Craigslist and another ad service, the license with Craigslist gives them exclusive rights to the ad--if I'm reading this right it means they can then tell the 2nd ad service to take the content down since CL has the exclusive license. I'm not saying CL will do this, just that having that kind of license up front opens the door to such a scenario.
Craigslist is not asserting copyright, rather it is asserting that it is the exclusive licensee of the poster's copyright and wants to go after e.g. Padmapper on behalf of the poster.
The judge in the Righthaven (copyright troll) case ruled they didn't have standing to sue, specifically because they didn't have an exclusive license. I guess this is a response to that.
I still don't think most craigslist posts are copyrightable though.
I think the only real long term solution is for craigslist to build and charge for an API, because I really don't think their copyright claims will hold up in court if someone with enough money to handle the legal battle shows up one day.
Since AirBnB has tight Craigslist integration, allowing the user to post their listing after they have posted on AirBnB, this sounds like a total paradoxical situation (for lack of a better word). AirBnB kind of set up a listing acting a "proxy", but the owner of the listing hits the final "confirm" to post.
How much does Yardsale rely on Craigslist to stay alive? I posted a few items on Yardsale but got empty, flaky replies from Craigslist and still had the "crazy inbox" problem. Using this as a jumping off point to divorce from Craigslist, it would be good for Yardsale to differentiate itself with quality of buyers and manageability of enquiries rather than act as just a portal with all of the same problems and no real benefits.
Why don't they just add a damn map mode already? I get it, they don't want to change "the secret formula", so make craigslistmapper.com as an extension of craigslist. Everyone who doesn't want to deal with mapping can stay at craigslist.
Seems to me that would only apply to the specific instance of content you posted on CL.
If you create another post somewhere else, just make it different - it's not a work derived from that content.. it's derived from facts that you already know.
You could post different content on another site all you like.. but nobody can take CL's content and use it.
It's no wonder, more people try to take craigslist data and push it in their own site while serving ads it's crazy. Yes, when I post an ad on craigslist I want that ad to be on craigslist, don't have a problem with that at all.
208 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 244 ms ] threadAn exclusive license means landlords themselves are giving up their right to post the same listing on other rental listing sites, for example, by using a tool that would post the exact same listing to multiple sites.
The photographs however would be covered by copyright.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
'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.'
I have an original photo and publish it as part of a listing ('the content'). The photo is not a derivative work.
> I have an original photo and publish it as part of a listing ('the content'). The photo is not a derivative work.
No, but if someone uses that photo (from the listing) to make something else, that something else is a derivative work, and thus covered by the craigslist license.
I suspect that the craigslist wording isn't intended to be restricted to derivative works. That is, I think that they meant to include content as is in addition to derived work from said content.
It looks like you can't transfer copyright but you can exclusively licence it.
Urheberrecht encompasses thing such as the right do defend against modifications that go against the spirit of the work or the author or against defacing it, the right to be named as the creator (though this one can be waived by contract depending on the circumstance) etc. The Urheberrecht can only be transferred by inheritance.
The Verwertungsrechte is anything related to the use of the work, such as selling, buying, (sub)licensing it.
Please keep in mind that this is a gross oversimplification and IANAL. The copyright situation is complicated enough for experts in the field and cannot be explained in a short post I guess :)
This isn't boilerplate legalese.
Less than 1% of what was stated would ever be held up in a dutch court. Things like the concept that a company can just define their liabilty themselves. Or how they have the right to share personal data with 3rd parties. The laws can not overwritten with contracts, esspecially ones without signatures.
In essence, and this was quite funny to realize. There is no EULA that would reduce liability, or increase rights of the seller. An EULA can really only be used against the company.
Im not sure about the situation in the US. But the same should be true to some extend. EULA are fake legal documents lawyers sell as if they have any value.
Its a complete scam.
And this could very well be a good example of the 1% that would actually be uphold.
If they had your signature, that is. Getting exclusive content liscence without explicit permission? They cant even prove it was you that submitted the content in the first place.
Imagine a store having a sign that they own your bag, whenever you enter. Come on, this will not hold up in court.
Compare certain opensoure companies that require contributions to assign copyright to them. They all demand a real piece of paper, with a real signature.
My understanding is that it's not true to much of any extent in the US. The contract will generally win. It'll depend on the jurisdiction and the case, but it's certainly not the case that all EULAs are per se invalid. Nor is it the case that "the laws cannot be overwritten with contracts." Overwriting the legal default rules is what contracts do.
A good example is rape. It does not make sex illegal, it just makes consent a requirement. There is no analogue for murder, so event consent would not allow murder.
Thats the extend of such liscences: they can ask consent for things that require consent. But most of them are filled with stuff that either does not require consent, or where consent is irrelevent.
But when i hear about the type of frivolent lawsuits, i do believe at least liability is defined very differently. Here companies are not liable for misuse by idiots. If an average person understands you can not microwave your cat, then there is no liability when an idiot does that. On the other hand, companies can not distance themselves from being liable for harm due to defects.
Either case, legal terms are not very relevant either way. Because they do not constitute a proper effort of informing. That last part is very relevant. Implicit terms can not define the context, only try to formalize it.
IOW: This text gives Craigslist some ammo to go after a site they can prove got the listing from copying Craigslist, but not sites the listing author also posted to.
Operationally, probably true. However, ethically this is no different than the people who said PadMapper should just use "Craigslist's" data regardless of what Craigslist thought about the situation. To be consistent, either you believe:
1) It's ok for PadMapper to re-list Craigslist's data without Craigslist's consent.
OR
2) If you post a housing listing to Craigslist, you cannot post it anywhere else.
You don't want to instill fear into posters (IE, their product) that they could get sued by posting even a similar ad on a competing site. Then you enter the territory "I only have access to people who check craigslist" instead of an array of additional, complementary options. That doesn't sound very attractive.
Padmapper scraping data put up on CraigsList and adding it to their own listings is very very different than me putting my own listing on multiple sites.
I don't see this as a "application of principles" issue. The principle I'm consistently applying is "I have the right to tell whomever I want about something I want to sell." And Craigslist is applying the consistent principle that the listing I provided belongs to them. If you ask me, putting my listing somewhere else makes it a different listing, because it didn't originate at craigslist (Like stolen listings on PadMapper), but instead, originated through me.
To apply my principle consistently, I wouldn't post a link to my Craigslist posting on another site, but I am perfectly entitled to re-post its content where-ever I please.
You don't want to instill fear into posters (IE, their product) that they could get sued by posting even a similar ad on a competing site. Then you enter the territory "I only have access to people who check craigslist" instead of an array of additional, complementary options. That doesn't sound very attractive.
EDIT: Okay, let me be less flippant. I ask about you being a lawyer because we don't know how Craigslist will enforce this policy. Everyone is assuming the worst -- CL will not let you post anywhere else! -- when, in practice, such a policy is probably not enforceable in court.
You have a well-reasoned comment, sure, but someone can't really speak to the enforceability of this without practicing law.
This is clearly directed to services like Padmapper - which, by the way, I strongly support and wish Craigslist would leave TF alone.
Of course you can just slap the same lawyer silliness on your form and claim that you have also been given exclusive licence by your users and counter sue craigslist. I'm not sure if court is required to resolve the matter if you both have identical claims. Not sure if who got their "exclusive" licence first matters anything in such case.
No one is forcing anyone to use Craigslist. You are free not to post and free to not agree to those terms. Why should a publisher (which is what CL is) grant non exclusive rights? It's a business. If you don't like the terms, you aren't forced to sign the contract. You can always post a newspaper ad, or start your own site. Just because CL has the user base doesn't mean that they are preventing competitors from entering the market any more than Stephen King's publisher is stopping other writers from writing and publishing novels. Stephen King is well known and sells lots of books, but that's not a monopoly, it's a competitive advantage.
Should all companies be forced to give up their competitive advantage to make it easier for competition? Of course not. Competitors need to create their own advantage. It's like suggesting that FB has a monopoly on social simply because they have the most users. You can start your own. Facebook (and CL) aren't preventing users from visiting your site, nor are they preventing sellers from writing a different post for a different site. They're claiming rights to the specific ad posting. It's exactly like the publishing industry.
This anger seems to stem directly from Padmapper blatantly stealing CL data and acting as if it was perfectly fine. I'm no fan of CL, but they have the right to do whatever they want with their data, just as users have the right to not use CL. Don't like the terms, don't do business with them.
The Padmapper guys could take on CL and likely succeed I they had any clue about business development. Instead they spend their time trying to game CL instead of building their own business. If they started hyper locally and focused on a small area or neighborhood, they could easily dominate in that neighborhood with just the cost of some kinkos flyers (assuming they have a great product.) they need only contact landlords in their area, offer to post their ads for free and then flyer the neighborhood advertising 'Park Slope Apartments for Rent' or whatever neighborhood they choose. They'll start to build users. Then they add another neighborhood until eventually they reach critical mass in a specific city. CL took years to get where they were. It takes hard work and getting out from behind the computer screen from time to time. In the rental listings market, the code and UX is easy, the hard work is getting out there and building the business.
I din't get why CL has any obligation to help a competitor short circuit CL's 10+ years of hard work. Do some hard work yourself -- CL is beatable. Look at MySpace: millions of engaged users suffering through a horrid UX, yet they fell to some geographically marketed site called Facebook. You want to build a better CL -- learn from Zuck and Co how they beat MySpace. It's a hell of a lot more than just code.
I don't know the answer to this question, but I would be annoyed if the network were allowed to lock me in like this. Other networks should be annoyed too.
Should all companies be forced to give up their competitive advantage to make it easier for competition?
Depends on the competitive advantage. Fast code? Theirs. Marketing know-how? Theirs. Monopolistic or illegal practices? Can't keep. Sorry. I definitely disagree with the "companies can do whatever they want" crowd and side with the "you have a business here you play by our rules" crowd.
Still, CL isn't a public good. Don't like them, turn the channel.
I see your point but I don't think the difference between TV ads and classified ads is as big as you think it is. In both cases the ad content provider is paying the medium to display the ad. For a TV show, the provider is being paid, and therefore subject to the terms of sale (some shows do show on more than one network, for instance, but not until they are "old" episodes).
In the US there are even some TV stations that spend a major chunk of their time showing commercials ("infomercials"). In these cases content is not a differentiator.
There are also print-based classified-ad (magazines) (Auto-Trader, for example) that don't restrict re-using your ad.
Standard Oil only had 64% market share when it was broken up.
Edit (since I can't reply): We aren't expecting a FB breakup for the same reason we don't expect a CL breakup; the US Justice department has been taking a hands-off approach. Given their expertise and the possibility of doing damage, that might be the right approach, but that doesn't mean the monopolies don't exists and aren't doing damage. (Remember, I'm not arguing for a CL breakup, just for the fact that the monopoly exists and must be discussed.) Frankly, I would support a FB breakup, especially if it could lead to an open social-media protocol for federations.
There are plenty of CL competitors. It's just that nobody uses them.
I'll put it this way: do you really think CL has 80% market share because no one can build a better competitor? The site UI is crap.
Padmapper isn't the existential threat. It's CL's failure to keep improving.
There's no particular reason to think that spiders are a giant problem for them. Any high-volume site deals with crawlers all the time. If it were a problem because of some site architecture weirdness, it'd be easy enough to set up something that wouldn't be problematic. For example, the RSS feeds they already offer.
Worst case, they could charge people like Padmapper a fee to license the data. Which in fact they already do, but they insist on it being mobile only.
So Craigslist's behavior is purely a business choice, not driven by any technical necessity.
Their argument was at one stage that they can keep most of the site free by keeping their costs way down by having a simple site. The though free & simple was better than fancier for a price or even that the simplicity was good in itself.
For a long time that argument was interesting and seemed to be working. Now it seems to be not working as well.
It may be that technology & UI brought to the table in 2002 would have been a net loss for Craigslist & that in 2007 improvements would have been too small to bother with. In 2012 there is mounting proof that tech & UI have improved enough that the potential improvements are huge.
When the gap between what a big provider is doing and what is possible gets that big, that's economic pressure. It will be felt in all sorts of ways: competition, users trying to access the data via different interfaces, etc.
Tightening up TCs or setting legal precedents is plugging leaks that happened because of the pressure. Not only does plugging leaks not relieve pressure, it increases it.
If they were honestly all about helping people, surely Craigslist would let the market decide what is most helpful to them.
And no, people don't appear to be legally free to use other sites as well as Craigslist with the same content they've created.
And no, people don't appear to be legally free to use other sites as well as Craigslist with the same content they've created.
If you're not a lawyer, this is conjecture. We don't know how this will be enforced in the future.
Clicking "Continue" confirms that craigslist is the exclusive licensee of this content
Does it refer, as many posters suggest below, to the item sold in the listing? Or does it only refer to the contents of the listing? If it's the former, I question its legal defensibility (oh man I'm not a lawyer, but I think that's right). If it's the latter, this is a clear pre-emptive move against future PadMapper-type problems.
If they're worried about losing relevancy to innovators, why not try innovating rather than legal maneuvering?
It will also allow them to argue that subject to compliance with the licence, the information could only have been accessed from CL.
The reality of course is that for a certain number people (perhaps limited) CL will be the only site where the submit content and will therefore not be concerned about granting an exclusive licence.
However, I'm sure a greater percentage of people will not necessarily grasp what Craigslist are asking for here and will not be put off posting elsewhere. Of course, CL will not go around enforcing the terms of the exclusive licence against the user.
The grant of exclusivity will simply allow them to argue that subject to compliance with the licence, the information could only have been accessed from CL, or at least is more likely to have been obtained from CL.
If Craigslist are serious about ensuring they can rely on the exclusive licence it should be made clear that the grant means the user can't post the content anywhere else however this may mean that people would be more put off using the site.
My view is that it's a shame that CL are now attempting to assert an even tighter stranglehold over information originating from users. In the long run it may assist Padmapper in pushing people away from using CL in the first instance.
It's also worth nothing that their terms of use need to be updated to reflect the exclusivity change:
http://www.craigslist.org/about/terms.of.use
We all believed in Craigslist and this is our reward? WE built up Craigslist to be what it is and now we're held hostage for it? I feel like a fool, why do we keep falling for this? Help the little grow until he becomes king and screws us all.
CL isnt popular here in Holland, but i was under the impression, it was ebay meets dating, using a 200 byte php forum file, that looked so old, you would just assume encodimg errors.
Why are you getting your panties in a twist? What import role does this site play in your life or that of others?
I'm told it is one of the 100 most popular sites on the internet (and one of the 50 most popular in the US).
One of the reasons people feel strongly about it the platform nature. If you don't like the Craigslist interface for finding apartments, you don't have much choice. That is where everyone lists their apartments. Similarly, it is the first place everyone lists apartments because it is widely known that this is where users check.
For that reason, it's been hard for competitors to get any traction... even when the competitor has better technology.
I really wish, we had proper laws to deal with all these vendor lockin tricks. Its as if the free market, without proper regulation just ends up promoting innovation in loopholes that give an unfair advantage.
Everyone wants to be a cable company these days, and be selling access to customers. Instead of contributing something of actual value themselves, they just want to tax others when they do. Hijack the customer, and be the middle man.
They all essentially implement the same bussiness model as the mob.
There's only likely to be one major classified ad company, because advertisers want to use the site with the most users, and users want to use the site with the most classified ads. That's hard for a competitor to break into, not because of anticompetitive behavior by Craigslist, but because of the nature of the market.
As for the law, the general rule of thumb, in the US at least, is that it's not illegal to have a monopoly, but it is illegal to use your monopoly to dominate a second market.
Because thats essentially what this "exclusive" liscence entails?
If they want to "own" user submitted content, they need a signature. Just putting some terms up will not suffice, unless the site "sell us your exclusive content" with big "make CL own this content" buttons.
This. CraigsList's search features for cars are abysmal. AutoTrader.com, on the other hand, lets you do awesome stuff like "find me a Toyota or Honda sedan costing less than $12,000 within 15 miles of me", save that search, and get email alerts when new matches come in.
But in my market, all the sellers were on Craigslist.
Sucky network effects.
It's pretty much the standard way to find a place to live, to find an employee or a job, to buy and sell used cars, etc... etc...
It's also known for having 3 times higher revenue-per-employee than Google even though the vast majority of activity on the site is free.
The amount of spam and high expectations / low financial reward is high, but a lot of my small business contracts are from Craigslist.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/craigslist.org
It is beyond me, why they refuse to improve the service. They could do it one small step at a time, carefully and slowly, so they don't upset their not so tech savvy audience (much of their audience falls in this category)
Things might change soon if they keep behaving this way, but at this moment, no-one comes close to CL (ebay may be, but you can't rent apartments from ebay)
In choosing between evils, I'll still stick with Craig.
Standard IANAL disclaimer.
Edit: replaced copyright with license. Low caffeine morning.
The information that is used to build the ad remains open to be used wherever and whenever the poster wants. I believe this storm is caused by third parties leeching off their ads and not users posting the ad in multiple places. Let's not get too dramatic about it.
"BRAND NEW CONDO 1BA 1Br wood floors!!!! sends us an email. $1200/mo!!"
If you take that same ad and post it on Craigslist and another ad service, the license with Craigslist gives them exclusive rights to the ad--if I'm reading this right it means they can then tell the 2nd ad service to take the content down since CL has the exclusive license. I'm not saying CL will do this, just that having that kind of license up front opens the door to such a scenario.
I still don't think most craigslist posts are copyrightable though.
I think the only real long term solution is for craigslist to build and charge for an API, because I really don't think their copyright claims will hold up in court if someone with enough money to handle the legal battle shows up one day.
Since AirBnB has tight Craigslist integration, allowing the user to post their listing after they have posted on AirBnB, this sounds like a total paradoxical situation (for lack of a better word). AirBnB kind of set up a listing acting a "proxy", but the owner of the listing hits the final "confirm" to post.
Take a look here for example of the integration. http://andrewchen.co/2012/04/27/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an...
You could post different content on another site all you like.. but nobody can take CL's content and use it.