I mean, I couldn't go to the store, grab the auto trader, photo copy it, slap my own label on it and sell it as my own.

[edited by: Gibble at 2:17 pm (utc) on July 13, 2007]

It's someoneelses content, source of revenue, and business.

ANYTHING written, whether tagged with a copyright or not, is still copyrighted to it's owner (be it the poster, or depending on the policy at the location of the post, the websites).

I currently work for a company who WILL block, and/or prosecute anyone who crawls our site scraping ads or other date. We take it very seriously. Not only are we losing money because of a loss of visitors to your site because you stole our content, but while you're busy stealing our websites content, it's costing us money spent on bandwidth that would be better served to a real customer.

[edited by: Gibble at 3:29 pm (utc) on July 13, 2007]

# You are responsible for your own posts and agree not to hold PHD Software Systems (webmasterworld.com) liable for any messages posted.

# You will not copy and retransmit any information out of these forums without first getting the permission of the original author of the message and a WebmasterWorld.com administrator.

# Messages posted at this site are the sole opinion and responsibility of the poster.

# When a message is placed in any forum system, you are granting a soft license to the site to use it.

In short, here the poster still owns the rights.

[edited by: Gibble at 3:33 pm (utc) on July 13, 2007]

If you intend to do what you want to do, you need to get clear, written permission beforehand. Otherwise, expect consequences.

u mean the poster not the site....so the site can not clain anything right?

Uh...yes. There are several things they could 'clain'. And just because you're stealing now from a person, not a website, doesn't make it more right.

Illegal is still illegal.

What about I crawl the site and I show it to my own users not public.?

What about I crawl the site and I show it to my own users not public.?

craigslist TOS seems to cover that. It prohibits "any use of data mining, robots, spiders, or similar data gathering and
extraction tools" and it also says the service is for your own personal use.

I am just investigating on this subject before I launch the site.

What about I crawl the site and I show it to my own users not public.?

if craigslist is not the owner if the poster is the owner ...

I am doing something illegal against the poster not the craigslist.

what about I show the posters info to my users?

1. Craigslist SPECIFICALLY states that what you are doing is against it's Terms of Service.
2. The work is copyrighted, no matter who owns it, it's not yours, and copying it IS illegal.

Unless you get permission from both Craigslist, and EVERY poster who's ad you copy, what you are doing is going to get you in trouble.

Sections 12 and 14 of their TOS clearly state that you can't do this.

[edited by: Gibble at 1:27 pm (utc) on July 14, 2007]

I searched all the net but could found nothing!

Do what you want, but seeing as how craigslist is an established company, and has specific clauses in their TOS against it, I'm sure they monitor for it.

I know my company monitors for it.

If you're lucky, they catch you, and block you. If you persist trying to spider their site, they'll take legal action.

does that make a difference?

if put references like google.....
does that make a difference?

Why are you asking here? Why don't you ask craigslist directly?

did google asked the site owners or the posters?

I wanna understand where should I stand as ý see the line is really thin!

You will find that Google has plenty of legal problems related to copyright issues. I guess the difference between them and others who try to do the same thing is that Google has lots of money and they can put up a fight for a little while, but the average webmaster would be quickly squashed like a bug.

I don't think google is on bad foundations.

am I mistaken? I always thought google has a good business model?

am I mistaken? I always thought google has a good business model?

Well, just like the cop told me when I tried to explain to him how I 'accidentally' ran the red light: "Tell that to the judge."

we need a better system to accomplish this is there no authority that can tell me this?

is there no authority that can tell me this?

Your attorney. He's an authority on the law. Don't have one? Get one.

is there no authority that can tell me this?

Craigslist TOS is pretty authoritative for their site. So, if their TOS says you cannot do what you're asking to do, what more authority than that do you want?

If Craigslist says that posts remain the property of the poster, then your authority there is Copyright law, which protects the authors' rights to their work. Without their express written permission, you cannot copy their posts.

So, if the TOS of the sites you want to crawl and Copyright laws are not sufficient authorities for you, then do as jtara suggests and talk to your attorney.

"I looted his apartment because everyone else was too," is not very much of a legal defense. So, just because you see some other site doing something, even getting away with it, doesn't mean that they are right in doing what they are doing.

I will build a site what will crawl craigslist.org and than disply the same adds in my own site..

is this plagiarism? is there any copyright for adds?

I mean adds and posts are not in the ownership of anybody is it?

thanks.