I know the 3Taps people pretty well. They're seasoned entrepreneurs and they definitely know what they're doing with the 3Taps API. One of the founders is a grey haired attorney who's thought this through pretty carefully. They're also prepared to handle any legal issues that arise since they need to be, but also because it would be the best PR ever.
As gray hair as they might be, they come across as rather morally bankrupt and I can't imagine this ending remotely well for anyone in this industry.
Either Google will have to begin applying constraints to cacheing, or the websites will have to apply constraints to Google indexing, or the websites will have to enter into an arms race with the likes of 3taps.
The end result will be a great deal of wasted money, and if 3taps is actually successful, the decimation of the businesses whose data they rely on.
Then what? Is 3taps going to build another Craigslist, for free, and open up their data silo to the internet?
I think this is great. Ownership of user contributed content is a big open question. Now everything is becoming social and crowd-sourced. If this pushes the question to the forefront so an actual judgment is made it will put businesses on some sort of solid ground. Right now a lot of people are building on potential quicksand.
I like flickr's approach. Users own the content and define the copyright. Flickr provides an open API and a TOU which makes it tricky and/or illegal to source the content directly from their servers.
If a billion dollar business relies on people giving them content for free and them keeping the copyright and re-selling the content, then I think maybe they're the morally bankrupt ones.
APIs are everywhere now and API use is becoming quite a big sticking point. I think content API platforms are the future of the Internet and a lot of the big names (Facebook, Yelp, Twitter, Foursquare, etc.) But yes, someone needs to figure out how to monetize being a content platform (in a non-Wikipedia way). Assuming you have the right to take the content, resell it and own the copyright seems like a weak assumption that has only worked so far while people were less savvy about it.
Yes, but are they prepared to handle everyone else's legal issues too? Is doing so in the agreement between them and Padmapper? I'm sure they're great guys, but that doesn't obligate them to protect Padmapper from Craigslist.
