It's hard for me to see this as stealing content since:
1) Padmapper shows the original craigslist page when you click through to the details page.
2) Padmapper doesn't seem to be monetizing itself in any obvious way, at least not directly through ads on content.
3) Craigslist doesn't monetize its content through ads, anyway.
Essentially all it offers is a wrapper that lowers the friction to discovery. You know, like those kids over at Google. Or Bing. Or DuckDuckGo. Are they stealing content?
PadMapper obeys robots.txt's, for the record. Also, it doesn't repost their content, it reposts facts about the content, which is a pretty key difference.
They've had an informal amnesty for services using their stuff for a long time, Craig has stated that they're OK with services that interface with them as long as they don't use many server resources, but they recently updated their TOU and started sending out huge waves of C&D's a few weeks ago, based on my talking with people.
The difference is that the search engines aggregate from the whole web, PadMapper was just appropriating content from CL, which is against their TOS. It's very clearly spelled out.
All the other companies that have tried have also been told to C&D. If you don't like it, start your own network...
"Any copying, aggregation, display, distribution, performance or derivative use of craigslist or any content posted on craigslist whether done directly or through intermediaries (including but not limited to by means of spiders, robots, crawlers, scrapers, framing, iframes or RSS feeds) is prohibited."
PadMapper gets content from more than just Craigslist. They have their own postings (padlister.com), sublet.com, apartments.com, apartmentfinder.com and a lot more. There's really not that much difference between them and a search engine.
I've heard this argument many times before, it was the same with Oodle, but PadMapper's business model is to aggregate apartment listings (Google's is not) and this is in contradiction to the TOS so inevitably Craig Newmark sends them a C&D letter.
Several innovative solutions have been invented over the years, the most obvious one is to do the CL scraping on the client, this way there is no indexing server to block, it's just the client reading all the search listings, parsing them and offering faceted filters. It breaks the spirit of the TOS but it would be impossible for CL to block. I am not advocating this, just pointing out one of the many approaches that have been attempted over the years.
The immediately following text in the CL ToS reads:
As a limited exception, general purpose Internet search engines and noncommercial public archives will be entitled to access craigslist without individual written agreements executed with CL that specifically authorize an exception to this prohibition if, in all cases and individual instances: (a) they provide a direct hyperlink to the relevant craigslist website, service, forum or content; (b) they access craigslist from a stable IP address using an easily identifiable agent; and (c) they comply with CL's robots.txt file ...
What a silly analogy. If I have a car and you steal it from me, you now have a car and I don't. What PadMapper does is it takes a picture of my car and shows/sells it to people. Analogies require handling with care :-)
Please note that there was no analogy in my original comment. I was merely summing up the OP's argument. Additionally, as someone who has plans to write a craigslist-centric app, and took the time to read the TOS, I find it idiotic for a developer to charge ahead with creating an app/site without either understanding the terms, or obeying them.
What's more is that you are arguing against the notion that whoever creates the content (or own's the content) has the right to decide what gets done with that content. And no matter how much you dislike what they are doing with their content (ie. not creating a shiny interface to access said content), that does NOT give you the right to use that content without permission. It is my understanding that craigslist often gives out permissions to use it's content, and it would appear as though this company didn't bother to secure that permission.
Kika's analogy is also incorrect. What PadMapper does is takes a picture of information like a book, recipe, source code, etc. and then posts it on the Internet so that people can consume the information without going to Craigslist's website.
This is without the permission of Craigslist or of the original submitter or the content.
Without going to the craigslist this information is vastly incomplete. You just see where the property is. Then you click through to the craigslist website. Well, I haven't used PM for a while, but when I was renting it was that way.
