Hating Craigslist right now
 

Maybe some of you use Jaxed.com's Mashup. It was a metasearch for craiglist, ebay, kiiji and a few others for cars.

It seems that the Craiglist (read ebay) lawyers sent them a C&D letter.

The jaXed Mash Combined For Sale Listings

Just sharing my frustration with those jerks.

They violated CL terms. Why the hate? CL is free to determine their terms of use. Aggregation sites make money (from ads) by using CL's content.

So why are CL jerks in this case?

How about SearchTempest - The EASY way to search Craigslist ?

What exactly is CL trying to protect by sending this C&D?

I used to use craiglook, but they shut them down a while back. I've been using search tempest.

Eyeballs on their site and traffic as well as branding. CL pays for their infrastructure. They spent the time and money to create the brand. Then an aggregator comes along and essentially uses their infrastructure and data within their own site.

Why should jaxed be able to use CL's data on their own site? They didn't pay for it.

craigslist | about > factsheet

#6 and #7 seem to be in direct conflict.

As for Jaxed; they are acting no differently than Google. They are providing a search of CL sites, the results link and open directly to CL pages.

Why doesn't craigslist provide a search feature beyond each site? Too time-consuming to search their way.

So you own a strip club. One day, a guy comes in, and places video cameras in your club. You thinks, WTF? He explains to you that its, "no big deal", because he's only showing the video to people in other cities. As a club owner, you would have no problem with this, right? Of course you would.

While CL can do what they want it does seem as thou they are reducing to value to their customers who have goods to sell by reducing their exposure.

Your analogy is flawed.

It would be correct if the fellow created links to the strip club website, showing which girls were working.

I love this one

AutoTempest - Find your next car... Faster.

Seems a bit like shooting yourself in the foot if you ask me. Jaxed allowed craigslist ads to get tons more hits than normal. Free advertising almost.

I certainly won't spend hours searching city by city!

Because Jaxed was a hugely useful aggregator that gave each CL listing a broader exposure and thereby enhanced the value of the CL content.

I don't get the CL position on this.

I've found two cars through Jaxed I would otherwise never have found. Both on CL.

I think an analogy might be a newspaper suing a library for stocking tHeir paper in the reading room. Silly IMO.

I miss Craiglook so so so much...!

For years, I've been using:

crazedlist.org

As annoying as it is, why craigslist choose to keep their searches focused locally is entirely their decision. They have a reason for it, we may not agree and it may not be a smart decision but it is how they want things.

If a 3rd party service provides the broader CL searches and also has advertising on their pages then they are deriving revenue from CL's content. Remember CL only charges for employment and real estate listings. Standard classifieds are free so if they don't profit from it then why should someone else.

There very well could be an issue with how these other services impact CL's infrastructure. With local listing CL's servers and databases are set up a specific way. It's quite possible that some query methods put unnecessary load on their databases that they were not designed to deal with or that negatively affect performance.

Jaxed didn't charge for their service. They do have some ad banners though.

I think the FBI should definitely be involved, since they are doing nothing else these days except wanking for the sake of Hollywood with the same level of post-2001 funding.

5 years in jail and/or $250K/per incident(plus millions in private legal costs) for stealing other's media.

Mabye our federal taxes could be equally applied to all media businesses.

Don't think Jaxed were retiring off the banner ad revenue but that's besides the point.

My point is that it doesn't matter if you "get it." CL created their system and brand, and they have terms of use. Their ball, they can take it and go home.

I'm continually amazed that people think that certain things in life should be free. Nationwide CL searches, music mp3 files, shared carfax searches. Woohoo - entitlements for all!

If you want nationwide searches, then build your own system, or abide by the rules of those already in place. Jaxed could have tried to negotiate a deal with CL. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn't. Doesn't matter - CL gets to control their own destiny. They did the work, they can kick off the leeches if they want.

Agreed.

There are people who spend their lives sitting on the floor, pulling the wings off flies, tormenting puppies with sharp objects and hitting their nut-sack with a ball-peen hammer. They have a reason for it, we may not agree and it may not be smart but it is how they want things.

Ouch!

Casting this as an entitlement issue is a bit disingenuous IMHO. Neither CL or Jaxed charged for their service.

Jaxed was offering an umbrella service. Like my library analogy up-thread. A place you can go and read all kinds of magazines and newspapers for free.

Of course CL can do what they want about this. That is their right.

I just haven't heard a compelling reason why they chose to go this route—unless stomachmonkey is correct that Jaxed somehow puts an unforeseen stress on CL's server/database...which I have a hard time imagining.

And of course you are quite right in that it doesn't matter one whit whether I "get it".

When it comes down to it, Google pre-caching and archiving does the same thing: duplicating another companies media.

Although I personally don't mind this when I'm searching for an obscure website, and think it's a service to the internet community as a whole, from a legal standpoint it's still the same concept.

My "amazement" comment was not directed at you per se. My point is that nothing is "free" - at some point somebody has to pay for it. This is somewhat akin to file sharing. There are people who complain when torrent or things like Limewire get shut down. The problem is all that music and other content being downloaded for "free" isn't free for those that created it and/or distributed it. While you can question the fairness of the system, people seem very willing to steal some ("free") things in life while complaining bitterly about theft in other areas.

Found this today:

How to Search All of Craigslist Nationwide - wikiHow

Not sure what the big deal is.... Google does a great job searching all of Craigslist. For example, search:

craigslist bullit mustang 2010

Then, click on the More Search Tools option on the left, and enter a time period, such as Last Month.

Its all I use for my motorcycle searching on Craigslist.

Voila!

good point.

It's not as if CL is on a VPN.

So, to use HardDrives strip club analogy, it's like a strip club has the dancers all meet in a park to do yoga . . . and a guy sets up a camera....