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Comment by suprgeek | Hacker News Reader

While there maybe subtleties in "public access by humans" over "automated scraping" - these belong in the "business dispute" side of the fence. Using the CFAA is by definition - playing hardball - it includes Criminal Penalties in some cases.

What really amuses me is that in the Tweet highlighted, Craig is indeed implying that it is his money going to the EFF - who Opposed him in the legal case that lead to the money. So he should be called out for egregious bullying - using the threat of Criminal Sanction to get his way.

If an HN-friendly business (whatever that is) pulled the same move it would also be equally worthy of opprobrium.

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I think what you're trying to imply here is approximately as accurate as Techdirt's claim that Newmark "made the CFAA worse".

The CFAA isn't the only set of laws that has both a criminal statute and a civil cause of action. Newmark didn't --- can't, in fact --- threaten anyone criminally. Craigslist's recourse to a statute that included a criminal component added no rigidity to the ball they were playing with, whatsoever. Since they were suing to enforce their own terms of service, the CFAA was the correct statute to cite.

Other people on this thread have also suggested that recourse to the CFAA was somehow a nuclear option for Craigslist. It was not. People think this because Techdirt is misleading them, in order to whip up rageviews. You should be irritated at them for doing that (it's pretty much their whole M.O.).

Well put - and I had to chuckle at your use of the term 'rageviews'... I hadn't read that one before.

And it works :-( judging from the slacktivist chatter among my less intelligent (previously determined, not judging based on politics) but still technologically geeky FB friends.

Craigslist continues to destroy its competition by maintaining its walled garden. This wouldn't bug me as much if CL was actually serious about improving its user experience, which has more or less been the same for the past decade (just bad enough to be usable).

I don't mind it being spartan - but that aside there are usability issues. One simple example is the reason things like PadMapper and HousingMaps became popular. Another example is that their categories are often hard to filter through. Lastly, there are trust issues - something like "connect to Facebook" would really go a long way in some transactions.

If anyone ever needed proof that monopolies crush innovation, this would be a good starting point.

I don't see the connection between bullying being acceptable and improving a site's UX. If it's wrong then it's wrong regardless of whether or not they steal competitor's ideas when they crush them.

I don't have a problem with CL. It's dirt simple and it works. It reminds me of the simplicity of newspaper want ads.

We tend not to know what we're missing until someone gets sued for trying to give it to us.

Depending on how they're trying to give us something, they might darn well deserve to be sued!

CL is popular because it's simple, easy, cheap. They have tons of competitors that they manage to beat, so they're doing something right. Companies that want to horn in on them should create the marketplace as well as the front end, but they would fail at it so they're just left with complaining.

Or, they "dumped" free classified listings into the market, killing off competitors (newspapers), giving CL a monopoly.

Of course they "manage to beat" competitors, that's not hard for a monopolist. But it doesn't equate to "doing something right."

The whole suit is ridiculous from the consumer/society perspective. You can't argue that scraping Google to get CL listings harms CL in any way whatsoever. So the only TRUE reason to sue 3Taps (or their customers) is to retain the monopoly, plain and simple.

I'm starting to think that, on balance, CL may no longer be a net benefit to society.

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