Should Web Giants Let Startups Use the Information They Have About You?

Just after 10 am on June 7, 2007, Ryan Sit glanced at his Gmail inbox and saw the message he had been waiting nine months to receive. Sit, a 29-year-old software developer from San Diego, is the founder of Listpic, a site that used bots — automatic software-based agents — to pull images from craigslist for-sale listings and reorganize them into an easier-to-navigate, more attractive format. Instead of tediously clicking individual links to view photos, Listpic users could see them all collected onto a single page. The service was an instant success, and by early June it was pulling in more than 43,000 visitors a day and thousands of dollars a month in Google AdSense revenue.

Sit had long dared to hope that Listpic's success might prompt craigslist to commend him, initiate a partnership, or even buy Listpic and bring him aboard. So when he saw the message from craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster in his inbox, he thought that his dreams were about to be realized.

Then he read the subject line: "Cease and desist."

Instead of praising Sit, Buckmaster's email charged him with violating craigslist's terms of use, claiming that Listpic crossed the line between homage and copyright infringement. The missive demanded he stop displaying craigslist content. It closed with a terse "Please let us know of your plans for complying.

"Sit didn't have much of a chance to respond. Two hours after receiving the message, Sit went to Listpic and found that none of the images on his homepage were loading. When he clicked on one of the links that was supposed to lead to a specific listing, he was redirected to craigslist's main page. Sit's bots had been crippled. "They didn't even talk to me about trying to work something out," he says. "They just banned me.

Continue at >Wired< 

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