willrobinson

That Ekirch article is great reading. Thank you.

What was the date they started in the UK? How much cash on hand did they have at that point? A billion or so in the bank maybe?

It all started with public data. Google was born out of a project at Stanford centered around the idea of "online libraries". They had lots of practice using public datasets. The crawlable web is itself a public dataset.

Your point about OSM is the reason I mentioned the generosity of MapQuest.

And didn't CL change their terms (excl-->nonexcl) after some blogger posted about them? And didn't they make some changes to their site (collaborate with a maps provider so users can now get geo mappings) after filing this lawsuit? I've already forgotten now. This case just seems laughable to me. But what do I know.

If data is deliberately made available to the public, then it's public data. Even if's made available for free, that won't stop some on the web from trying to repackage it and derive commercial benefit from it. We've seen this many times. These folks have been very lucky that the validity of their assumptions has not been thoroughly tested in court. Somehow they become convinced they own the data. In reality they are merely the distributor.

Even if CL wins, e.g., they are granted an injunction to stop another site from scraping, scrapers can just get the same data from search engine caches. It's hard to argue trespass to chattels when the alleged trespasser never touches your servers. Moreover, search engines are themselves scrapers so clearly scraping is not per se a damaging activity in CL's view, only when it suits CL to view it that way. Arguing that robots.txt is a "license" is a stretch. It's designed to be read by a machine not a human.

And what if CL loses? What are the stakes then? Well, I'll let you answer that one. What exactly does 3taps have to lose?

CL claims they own the copyrights to facts and descriptions uploaded by CL users. Are users aware of this? Is it reasonable?

3taps' Answer should be a fun read.

"The law really only intimidates the people playing by the rules, or trying to."

A seemingly simple yet profound statement. Thanks for this.

Do you think most people listing ads on CL read the terms and understand them as you did? (Or were the terms confusing?) Are CL's terms different from what one would normally expect from a newspaper? That is, would you expect that the newspaper would require an exclusive license and prohibit you from running your ad anywhere else?

spellcheck: abolute

My favorites were the last paragraph and the last footnote.

How did those Russians get on anyway?

The only other thing I would add is that these high growth companies, so-called startups, are all utilizing the web. They are relying on what it provides. I guess that's implicit, maybe it need not be stated, but historically could older forms of media have supported the type of growth rates discussed? How popular was the term "startup" before the web? And did it mean the same thing?

The startup: 1. Trying to solve a harder problem than existing businesses are willing to take on. 2. Being equipped for rapid growth. 3. Utilizing the web.

I read the article differently. I think he's both smart and that he is spot on (but maybe Jarvis is the real source). Apple gets a lot of "free help" from the media, not to mention Hollywood, that other companies normally have to pay for.

I don't think he's suggesting that Apple has full control over what is said about them.

But that's sort of the point, they don't have to worry about that as much as other companies. They do not have to spend as much time and money trying to control the negative portrayals and carefully releasing positive ones. The media is flooded with positives about Apple. And Apple gets them for free.

Have you read the CL complaint?

"stole" market share. You got it. "[S]tole" was just a figure of speech. And that is in fact what meant by stole.

re: scraping. This is something that has come before the courts a few times (I'm thinking Ebay and a few others; although it might have been called "crawling"). Do you think CL can win on a claim of "scraping"?

"stole" and "steal" and "CL idea" are all in quotes for a reason. Here, quotes are intended to signify the words quoted do not necessarily carry their dictionary meanings. They carry whatever meaning you assign to them. And that is what you have done. To you, "steal" means verbatim copying. But I might have assigned a different meaning, or maybe the same one. It's a figure of speech.

As for summary judgment, I think you mean _granting_ of summary judgment, not _filing_. But I'm not going to split hairs on the words you used. I know what you meant, even if it wasn't technically correct.

The more Sherman Act claims that are brought against web incumbents, the sooner one is going to stick.

The CL blog stinks of entitlement.

Craigslist "stole" the classifieds business from local newspapers. Now they are accusing others of trying to "steal" the "CL idea" from them.

I am one of (probably) the few who actually prefer a CL type interface. But the way CL is behaving in the face of competition is just embarassing. If someone wants to reshape the data, then you have to let them. The data is not the property of CL. If users do not want their data on some other site, then that's their issue to raise, not CL's.

I am sure about what I said in my comment, not what you've said in yours. I said they started with free data. And indeed they started with data on the US, not the UK. Everyting begins at home. My point is Maps did not start from zero. Public data got the ball rolling.

I cannot say for sure but I would guess it is also what spurred the ideas to bring in a guy they knew who was doing related work at Stanford and also to acquire what became Google Earth. I believe it all began working with public data. They have obviously added lots of proprietary data since that time. They have a massive amount of cash to spend. Far more than the libraries and government agencies in the US who have the public data.

"cyber aggression"

Wow.

Credit to Mapquest for opening their data to all and giving OSM a big push forward.

Correct me if I'm wrong but Google Maps started with public data. Data you tradtionally could find in public and university libraries and from government sources, even before the web existed. And then what they found crawling the web. They saw the potential value and have just added to and improved it a great deal.

But they did not start from zero. Nor has Apple.

Do not underestmate the "free" contributions to this type of data. It is not insignificant. It really should be open. In my opinion.

Take away the financial incentive: high fees.

Good luck with that.

The only way to stop this troll problem is to stop these patents from being issued. Nip it in the bud. There will always be someone willing to pay for an exclusive license to the patent (i.e. buy junk patents) with the sole intent of using it to sue startups. Sad but true.

Even if the junk patent was filed for and obtained by a person who was intending to build a product or see that products get built using the technology, what we all know can happen is the product never gets developed, the patent is never practiced, and it gets sold or traded for something or acquired through bankruptcy or some other means. And... eventually... it can wind up in the hands of a troll.

Having these junk patents "floating around out there" (or maybe we should say lurking in the depths, like dormant but functional submarines ready to take out any ships who have set off on a journey to build products and made it far enough... it puts every startup at risk.

The essence of a patent is a government-granted right to sue. That is really all it is for the grantee. Nothing more and nothing less. The often cited language from the US Constituion only relates to the creation of a patent office and the purpose behind it, not what the patent office grants you. The USPTO does not give you a free ticket to a monopoly (modern US patents are not "letters patent") nor does it even ensure a successful business. You have to accomplish that on your own. Being able to sue infringers or having rights to sue as a bargaining chip in negotiation _might_ help. But it won't ensure your success. (Unless your "business" is pure patent trolling.)

Ideally (as the Constitution suggests) the patent is intended to spur innovation and (we would assume) protect a growing business of sharing those innovations (e.g. as products) with others, but that doesn't always happen. Businesses fail for a variety of reasons. But a patent, no matter how poor in quality, remains a right to sue, as long as the maintenance fees are paid. Thus even a long forgotten junk patent with no associated product or innovations is still a "live" right to sue, a potential threat, laying dormant until a. the owner gets bitter enough to adopt an extortionist mindset (e.g. look at what the co-founder of Microsoft, one of the wealthiest men in the world tried a number of years ago- no one is immune from this mindset) or b. the patent falls into the hands of a natural born extortionist, e.g. someone who actively looks to buy junk patents in order to sue people for a windfall. The patent troll.

3. Control bad PR. Warrantless threats of litigation are attributed to the shell not the troll. As far as the press can see the troll is not involved.

1. Limit liability. Each threatened action is made by a separate LLC created just for that purpose. The troll's company is not put at risk every time they want to threaten someone with litigation. The LLC does the dirty work.

2. Make it difficult for the target to assert any sort of leverage. If they do not know who is behind the shell, they do not know what resources the troll may have. If the troll is a practicing entity, they won't know if they have any claims they could assert against the troll. All they see is a recently formed LLC that has certain patent rights, and nothing else.

Google the Merciful should just send over a few maps people and help them out. What fun is a "thermonuclear war"[1] when it's so one-sided?

1. As declared by Our Man Jobs.

I wonder if they all took separate flights, because of the danger to Apple of having them all on one flight. What if there was a tragic plane crash? Apple could end up like Lynyrd Skynyrd.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynyrd_skynyrd

We could probably get the answer by hanging out on an ESL forum for a bit, that's assuming it's non-native English speakers who are making this mistake (it might not be!).

Can't wait to read this study.

The simple and unpleasant truth, as past research has shown, is that so much business, irrespective of its legality, is conducted using shells, so much wealth moves through them and into tax havens, it is unthinkable to shut the system down; doing so would probably hurt our economies more than help them. No one dares to mess with this beast. At least not in my lifetime.

And guess who needs untraceable shell companies? Patent trolls.

Not sure bout you but I see this as an _extremely_ common misspelling on the web. I would love to know how it arises. Phonetics? Soundalike? Lose and loose certainly have very different meanings.

Judy. Hot.

Cogswell Cogs. Not.