I hear you, but I don't know if the courts will agree with your interpretation. The reason for that is that the courts will look at the consequence of having that interpretation widely accepted and the impact on the current state of affairs. There are many many places where this has been litigated and the courts always come down on the side of the data aggregator owning rights to the data aggregated.
If PadMapper wanted to legally exploit the fact that the users own the listings, not Craigslist, they would have to establish a relationship with the user and get the information directly from them. They could contact the listing owners and suggest they list on PadListing. They can 'spiff' people who do so (meaning give them some benefit if they list on PadListing and the person discovers and rents through PadMapper). If they can prove that the listing owner asked them to list their property, Craigslist can't sue.
Alternatively PadMapper "need only"[1] create their own apartment listing service to have their own database where people listing apartments go to them directly. And that is a much harder thing to do than something which scrapes the listings from Craigslist and drops them on to a Google Map.
As a proof-of-concept, PadMapper is excellent. As a product, it has a data contamination issue.
[1] The scare quotes are there to acknowledge that its a challenge to get people to move from the known, to the new. I am trying to move people from Google to a new search service, its hard, its slow, but its the only way to do this and avoid this sort of litigation.
>If they can prove that the listing owner asked them to list their property, Craigslist can't sue.
Look at the Rightshaven case. The judge ruled that Rightshaven didn't have standing to sue on behalf just because the copyright holder granted it license to.
If that theory holds up, Craigslist wouldn't have standing to sue on behalf of the copyright holders.
Additionally copyright would only apply if the listings are considered creative works. Most of them are clearly simple statements of fact that wouldn't merit copyright protection in the first place.
As others have pointed out Craigslist can claim copyright to the collection. The legal theory I would expect them to use is that PadMapper wouldn't know about these listings if they didn't access Craigslist's collection, therefore their use of the collection violated Craigslist's copyright.
I did a quick Blekko for the case with the Yellow Pages that was litigated this way (but alas did not find it) where a AT&T sued the maker of a competitive Yellow Pages over using the collection of businesses in their book. The defendant argument was similar to yours, that they could have walked down the street and collected the information so the information wasn't copyrightable, but the judge ruled in favor of AT&T because it was clear the defendant could have done that but they didn't do that. There was some errors and omissions that mirrored the Yellow pages and 'proved' the defendant took their data from the Yellow Pages rather than collect it themselves.
For PadMapper to escape liability they have to be able to prove they came to know about these listings in some other way than through Craigslist's collection of them. They argued in their blog that 3Taps did that for them because they got them from 3Taps they aren't liable for what ever 3Taps is doing. And my take on it is that given the case law it will be a very hard thing to prove. If Eric Goldman is reading he could probably whip out a definitive argument here.
If it goes to trial I'll definitely follow the case to see how it plays out.
In Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service Co, a phone directory was ruled to be protected by copyright only if the selection and arrangement of facts was an original creative act (listing numbers alphabetically was not).
I'm aware of a case after Feist where a yellow pages for chinese immigrants was copyrightable because of the creativity involved in selection of the facts and the arrangement into categories. But even then the facts themselves are not copyrightable.
Craigslist's selection is nonexistent, you send it they publish it. And the arrangement of the subset that padmapper is using is solely by geographic location and time. In addition padmapper is not copying the arrangement.
Righthaven did not have a copyright, it had a "right to sue" on behalf of the original copyright holder's copyright. The court deemed that insufficient to give Righthaven grounds to enforce the copyright, because Righthaven did not have any copyright or license therein. A right to sue is not considered a "copy right" because it involves no right to copy the material (i.e., by distribution or reproduction).
Craiglist does have a license to copyrighted content. It can actually "copy" the content. Ergo, it has the right to enforce its license against non-licensed users.
"Because the SAA (lawsuit contract) prevents Righthaven from obtaining any of the exclusive rights necessary to maintain standing in a copyright infringement action, the court finds that Righthaven lacks standing in this case,"
Craigslist ToS doesn't grant them exclusive rights, thus by that judge's definition they don't have standing to sue.
>Craigslist ToS doesn't grant them exclusive rights, thus by that judge's definition they don't have standing to sue.
That is not what the judge is saying. By "exclusive" rights he does not mean wholly exclusive in the colloquial sense (i.e.,, sole person with such rights); the judge meant "exclusive" in the legal sense that Righthaven could exclude non-licensees from using such rights.
> I am trying to move people from Google to a new search service
Care to share? I've been trying to move away from google, but DuckDuckGo's search results are so often massively inferior. Other suggestions would be nice to have!
If PadMapper wanted to legally exploit the fact that the users own the listings, not Craigslist, they would have to establish a relationship with the user and get the information directly from them. They could contact the listing owners and suggest they list on PadListing. They can 'spiff' people who do so (meaning give them some benefit if they list on PadListing and the person discovers and rents through PadMapper). If they can prove that the listing owner asked them to list their property, Craigslist can't sue.
Alternatively PadMapper "need only"[1] create their own apartment listing service to have their own database where people listing apartments go to them directly. And that is a much harder thing to do than something which scrapes the listings from Craigslist and drops them on to a Google Map.
As a proof-of-concept, PadMapper is excellent. As a product, it has a data contamination issue.
[1] The scare quotes are there to acknowledge that its a challenge to get people to move from the known, to the new. I am trying to move people from Google to a new search service, its hard, its slow, but its the only way to do this and avoid this sort of litigation.