PadMapper Gets C&D From Craigslist Over Apartment Listing Maps 140
First time accepted submitter Autumnmist writes "Craigslist has
sent a Cease and Desist to PadMapper, a site that does a mashup of Craigslist (as well as Rent.com, Apartments.com) apartment listings and Google Maps. Craigslist is great, but apartment hunting through Craigslist has always been a needle in a haystack proposition, because all apartments for an entire city area are shown in a giant list. PadMapper made Craigslist better by locating each listing on a Google Map of the area.
From PadMapper: 'I recently received a Cease and Desist letter from Craigslist, and wasn't able to get a meeting or convince Craigslist's lawyer that PadMapper was beneficial to Craigslist and apartment hunters in general. They allow mobile apps to display their listings if you buy a license from them, but not websites."
Padmapper makes Craigslist useful!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Padmapper is the first site I've ever seen that makes apartment hunting on Craigslist actually useful!!!!
WTF?!?
I'm looking for a house in a specific neighbourhood and it's absolutely impossible to do via Craigslist directly!!! If Craig offered a map, I would at least understand why they might issue a C&D, but seriously...
Padmapper links directly into craigslist and displays the full-screen whenever you click on the listing. It's not like they're aggressively scraping content! It's just a searching service.
This is terrible, Craigslist!! Terrible!
Re:Why only PadMapper? (Score:5, Informative)
Did you try using the two sites. HousingMaps has a link to craigslist on the front page, and when you click on a listing, it goes to craigslist.
PadMapper has no links to craigslist, and when you click on a listing, they display the listing on their own site without (as far as I can tell) even a mention of where it came from.
Go to a site, scrape everything and present it as your own? Enjoy the C&D.
Seriously, it looks like PadMapper deserved it.
Re:Why only PadMapper? (Score:5, Informative)
I take part of my post back.. they do show the listing in a frame.. so if they had Craigslist's listing on there, it should be clear they are from craigslist
Re:Why only PadMapper? (Score:5, Informative)
I just pulled up the same area with the same price range as I was looking at yesterday in padmapper and housingmaps only shows two apartments for rent where padmapper was showing 30+ (and most of the padmapper results were craigslist based)
Re:Wait (Score:3, Informative)
Who the hell doesn't use Craigslist?
The Whole Wide World outside of US of A.
Re:Why only PadMapper? (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately, HousingMaps doesn't work. If you compare the listings on HM vs those on CL, you will see that HM has only a small, and unclearly-defined, subset of those. In otherwords, it has a bug, and doesn't pull out all the listings. Moreover, it has very limited options for searching, and divides up filters by bizarre factors (for example, I can look for apartments under $750, or between $500 and $1000, but not under $1000.
Unlike PadMapper, which was a site that actually tried to maintain a useful product, HousingMaps appears to have been only a one-off project by some coder looking for something to do (and to be clear, I give him credit for offering it to the world, but it's not the same as an actively developed project).
This is a horrible action by Craigslist. If they don't want their site to be useful, that's fine. But the postings are the property of their posters, not of Craigslist. Presumably, the posters would be happy to have anyone in the world coming to those listings. It should be *their* intellectual property rights that are at issue, not those of the intermediary.
Re:Do they actually own a copyright? (Score:4, Informative)
TERMS. OF. USE. VIOLATION.
Nowhere in that statement is anything to do with copyright, trademark, or patents.
"If you want to use our service, you will not do the following..." - "Oh, you violated our agreement. Stop it."
CraigsList is awesome, even if you don't get it. (Score:4, Informative)
I'm always amused when I see people, mostly web professionals, bitch about CraigsList.
The VC and bizdev types hate CL because "CL is just leaving money on the table. They need to understand how to make a profit."
Webdevs hate them because CL doesn't adopt whatever new design trend comes along, therefore CL "doesn't get UX", or webdevs hate them because of situations like this, where some webdev can't build his business off of someone else's platform.
This, compadres, is why you don't take your business public. CL has a staff of less then 20 people, they make plenty of bank while at the same time staying true to their own ethos, whether you agree or not. And the consumers seem to be coming back over and over. And yes, I have heard many people say that this is because CL has been around so long, that they are the 500 lb Gorilla that will never be moved. Uhh, are we on the same Internet? Tell that to Yahoo, MySpace, etc etc.
Here's a Wired article from 2009 that covers the exact topic of CL and site scraping. Maybe PadMapper should have read it first.
Wired Interview with Craig Newmark [wired.com]