Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Mon, 25 Jun 2012 07:07:00 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120622/22474419443/unfortunate-craigslist-continues-to-be-walled-garden.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120622/22474419443/unfortunate-craigslist-continues-to-be-walled-garden.shtml it isn't a profit-maximizing firm. I've frequently defended the company when it was attacked with bogus lawsuits. However, for years, I've been baffled by Craigslist's insistence on being isolationist against the rest of the internet. Almost exactly seven years ago, we were disappointed to see they were shutting down a search tool that made Craigslist easier to use. And, over the years, we've seen this same consistent pattern, whereby the company gets upset at anyone who builds on their work -- even if it takes no money away from Craigslist and likely drives more traffic to the site. Just last year, for example, we wrote about Craigslist bullying an online aggregator.

Late last week, it went down this same path yet again, but this time it picked on a service that's really really popular (more so than most of the others it targets): PadMapper. PadMapper is a pretty neat tool if you're looking for a place to live. It builds on a few different listings sites -- including Craigslist -- to provide much more value to the listing itself, such as by including an embedded map. It sends all the traffic to the original site, so it's not taking away any traffic. It's enhancing Craigslist's value. When others increase your value, you should applaud. But, here, as in the past, Craigslist sent a legal cease-and-desist.

Craigslist has regularly defended these takedowns, by claiming that it just wants people to come directly to its site, and that's part of its view of the "community." But, again, PadMapper was driving more people to the site and making it even more useful to them.

What's interesting this time, however, is that given how popular PadMapper is, and the fact that the guy behind PadMapper is asking people to (politely) suggest to Craig and Jim that they rethink this policy, I wonder if the company will finally change its mind. It's been getting a lot of attention in the tech/startup community. Even though Craigslist has done this before many times, this is the first I can remember doing it to a site that is so popular.

As I've said in the past, I think Craigslist is making a big mistake in blocking these kinds of things. I recognize their reasoning, but at this point, it's just silly. The rationale for blocking these other sites just doesn't add up. There's simply no reason to not be "neighborly" and allow others to drive more traffic to them. It's definitely disappointing to see the company keep this policy up for so long.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> share-a-little,-guys http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120622/22474419443 Mon, 5 Jan 2009 03:23:05 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090104/2328183283.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090104/2328183283.shtml sued social networking aggregator Power.com for a variety of things, including copyright and trademark infringement, unlawful competition and violation of the computer fraud and abuse act. I'm having trouble seeing how Power.com violates any of these things. Power.com, like plenty of other aggregator services, lets you bring together all your different social networking profiles in one spot. That seems like it could be valuable if you use a lot of those services. It doesn't do anything fraudulently, and it does not appear to misrepresent that it is a separate service. Users have to decide whether it's worth providing their username and password to Power.com, but it's not as if Power.com tricks anyone into doing so or does so in a misleading way. There's no confusion, so it's difficult to see what the trademark problem is about. It seems like a pretty big stretch for Facebook to also claim that showing the content from a user's profile is copyright infringement as well. Computer fraud? Please. Unlawful competition? Again, it may be (slightly) competitive, but it appears to actually improve the value of Facebook, rather than diminish it.

This is a pretty weak response from Facebook. Basically, it looks like Facebook trying to exert undue control over what other websites and services can do, and it's not clear that it has any real legal basis for doing so. It's a shame that a company like Facebook is becoming a legal bully at such a young age. I would have expected better. In the end, though, if Facebook keeps up actions like this, it will only hasten the shift to other social networks that don't try to limit what their users can do. Facebook might want to take a lesson from the eventual flop of Friendster after that social network was accused of being too controlling.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> help-me-out-here... http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090104/2328183283