Nah, it's not morally gray. You guys are a search engine. Craigslist may not like what you're doing, but that doesn't make it wrong. Traditional publishers hate Google, despite all the traffic it sends them. So what?
Getting a C+D from Craigslist is a good sign. It means you matter. Hang in there long enough, and Craigslist won't be able to cut you off, because a good chunk of their traffic will come through you.
It's kind of weird to think of Craigslist as stodgy old-media using the courts to defend an out-dated business model because they don't like being disrupted by new technology, but here we are.
Craigslist has every right to do what they want, regardless of whether or not you think its the right or wrong choice. If they choose to spit out C&Ds without self-improvement, then they knowingly run the risk of long-term obsolescence.
Sure. I'm not trying to give advice to Craigslist. It may well be that legal threats are their best strategy. They certainly have the right to sue anyone they want.
I'm just saying that ericd needn't feel guilty for ignoring Craig's wishes. Do you think Craig feels guilty about destroying the newspaper industry?
> Hang in there long enough, and Craigslist won't be able to cut you off, because a good chunk of their traffic will come through you.
If Craiglist was motivated that way, why would they have sent the C+D in the first place? It seems that CL is opposed to anyone violating their TOS, period, regardless of benefit to CL.
Craigslist dominates apartment rental advertising. Landlords post to CL because that's where the renters are looking, and renters look on CL because that's where landlords post apartments. But CL does have competitors. Lots of sites want a piece of that business, they just can't overcome the network effect that protects Craigslist.
Right now, the overwhelming majority of pads on Padmapper are Craigslist posts. But that's just because the overwhelming majority of all advertised apartments are Craigslist posts. If people start using Padmapper in large numbers, it breaks the symmetry of CL's dominance. Landlords are still posting to CL, but renters are finding those posts through Padmapper. It won't be long before landlords realize that those renters will also find posts on Kijiji or Apartments.com or whatever. When that happen's CL is in trouble, because it's revenue comes from landlords in certain cities paying to post.
CL doesn't care about the TOS per se; the TOS are designed to prevent just such a scenario.
Just thinking "out loud" here, it seems CL would need to stop others from using their data derived from Google or other search engines. If they can legally do that at relatively low cost, they would. Alternatively, if I was Craig, I'd have to seriously consider disallowing well-behaved search bots from scanning CL data. As a moderate user of CL I've never found a CL item through Google; after all, ads are good for only a week. I don't see a big loss to CL by cutting off Google/Bing etc.
Getting a C+D from Craigslist is a good sign. It means you matter. Hang in there long enough, and Craigslist won't be able to cut you off, because a good chunk of their traffic will come through you.
It's kind of weird to think of Craigslist as stodgy old-media using the courts to defend an out-dated business model because they don't like being disrupted by new technology, but here we are.