Uncategorized – craigslist blog (original) (raw)
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Life in the Fast Lane
April 18, 2017
Investors behind scraper/spammer startup Radpad enjoyed a juicy, well-deserved $60m “exit” recently, as reported by the National Law Review:
In its latest judicial victory, on April 13, 2017, craigslist obtained a $60.5 million judgment against Radpad on various claims relating to harvesting content from craigslist’s site and sending unsolicited commercial emails to craigslist users. (Craigslist, Inc. v. RadPad, Inc., No. 16-01856 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 13, 2017)).During the course of the litigation, Radpad became insolvent and its attorney withdrew from representation, essentially allowing craigslist to obtain what amounts to a default judgment.
The relief included:
- CAN-SPAM: $40 million, based upon violations from 400,000 emails.
- Copyright: $20.4 million for copyright infringement based on RadPad’s scraping of various user postings from craigslist’s site.
While it is doubtful that craigslist will ever collect its sizeable judgment, it will certainly raise the specter of such a large monetary award to future competitors and aggregators as an example of the potential consequences of engaging in unauthorized commercial scraping or spidering activities that run counter to craigslist’s terms of use and any cease and desist letters revoking access to its site.
Who says nice guys have to finish last?
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Found on CL: Best Friend
November 1, 2015
by Danielle Sepulveres on Femsplain
“We danced, we giggled, we took turns buying each other rounds, went on late night adventures to find an open pizza place. We agreed that a smart rule was only doing shots if you were drinking beer, not if you were having mixed drinks. We sat on the porch in our pajamas in the morning nursing our hangovers. She listened sympathetically while I told her a guy had broken my heart and this was the happiest I’d felt in months. By the end of the weekend, we found ourselves laughing so hard in a bar bathroom, gasping for breath and she loudly whispered, “You know what? You’re my favorite.” And I instantaneously exclaimed back, “You’re MY favorite!””
(illustration Fabiola Lara)
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Help Wanted
October 9, 2015
Rep Takano (D-Calif) specified that responsibilities include keeping the government open and maintaining women’s access to health care, while requirements are “proven ability to work with irrational people who pursue narrow priorities at the expense of millions of others” and “babysitting experience.”
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Burning Man Missed Connections
September 15, 2015
“You were crying under a crocodile. I was with a couple friends who noticed. You had a purple (was it blue?) faux-hawk. We descended upon you and embraced and comforted you. We ended up back at your camp in a delirious state of sleep deprivation and substance come-down. You made us bacon and eggs and we lay down for a nap that became a bit of a sticky triangle.
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Exit, Stage Left
June 19, 2015
From eBay, press release:
SAN JOSE – eBay Inc. announced today it has sold its equity interest in craigslist back to craigslist. In 2004, eBay acquired a 28.4% equity interest in craigslist. Under a confidential settlement agreement, craigslist has repurchased all of eBay’s equity and all litigation between eBay and craigslist will be dismissed.
From Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well, Act I, Scene I:
Love all, trust a few
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend
Under thy own life’s key: be check’d for silence,
But never tax’d for speech.
From Pando, journalism
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Sweet Ride
June 18, 2015
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craigslist DNS Outage
November 24, 2014
At approximately 5pm PST Sunday evening the craigslist domain name service (DNS) records maintained at one of our domain registrars were compromised, diverting users to various non-craigslist sites.
This issue has been corrected at the source, but many internet service providers (ISPs) cached the false DNS information for several hours, and some may still have incorrect information.
If you are unable to reach the craigslist site, please ask your network provider or tech staff to flush all *.craigslist.org and *.craigslist.com entries (A,CNAME,SOA) from their DNS servers.
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Our letter to Elliot Kaye, Chairman CPSC
November 21, 2014
November 21, 2014
Elliot Kaye
Chairman
Consumer Product Safety Commission
4330 East West Hwy
Bethesda, MD 20814
Dear Chairman Kaye:
I saw your ABC interview, and let me say first that we agree 100% on the product recall process; it’s broken, and it absolutely must be fixed.
You rightly lamented to ABC that for a typical recall, 95% of the recalled items are still in the hands of consumers 5 years after the recall notice. ABC noted in its report that hundreds of new recalls, involving many millions of products, are required each year. These figures are utterly shocking.
Imagine our dismay when you and ABC “came out shooting” at craigslist. Last we knew from your representatives, earlier this year, we were taking all appropriate steps to reduce the number of free classified ads for recall items by craigslist users.
Contrary to an assertion you made on ABC, we do not earn any revenue from these free classifieds, and it seems you may have been misinformed as to both our business model and what is involved in moderating free user classified, as opposed to the online retailers to whom you compared us.
I invite you to sit down with me here in San Francisco, to discuss how craigslist can further assist the CPSC in addressing product recalls. I will clear my calendar and make support staff available for meeting with you and relevant CPSC staffers. Since you, personally, have been the one leading the criticism, I trust you agree it will be time well spent for you as CPSC chairman, and I as craigslist CEO, to meet in person.
As added incentive for you to make the trip to the Bay Area (although I imagine you are out here regularly in any event), we also have some practical ideas for curtailing the hundreds of times each year you are left trying to “unring the bell” after millions of faulty products have already been sold to consumers.
Finally, Craig Newmark has been the victim of completely undeserved criticism by you and ABC, despite our informing ABC – weeks BEFORE they ambushed him – that he has not been involved with managing craigslist for over a decade and is not a spokesperson for the business he founded. This is commonplace at Internet companies. Craig is a dedicated philanthropist, and was unjustly defamed by “Recall Roulette.”
I look forward to meeting you.
Sincerely,
Jim Buckmaster
CEO, craigslist
jim@craigslist.org
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Hit Piece
November 20, 2014
We’ve learned ABC will soon air a misleading story, “Recall Roulette” that mischaracterizes our efforts to prevent free classified ads for recalled sale items by craigslist users, and falsely accuses us of not cooperating with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
Ignoring email and phone calls from craigslist with our side of this “story”, ABC News chose instead to ambush our largely-retired founder, Craig Newmark, outside his home on November 11.
This is not responsible journalism. Here is an email from our Director of Government Relations, sent to Brian Ross at ABC on November 4, complete with a follow-up call to make sure he understood it:
Brian,
Your request for an interview with Craig Newmark was forwarded to me.
Craig has not been involved in management at craigslist for many years, and has no role in government relations. He has never spoken to the CPSC about craigslist policy to my knowledge, and I have been managing goverment relations for craigslist for several years.
On the other hand, I did have a conversation with CPSC folks this spring, including Ray Aragon, Marc Schoem, and Dennis Blasius.
You should know that craigslist (1) prohibits the sale of recalled items; (2) notifies its users that posting recalled items for sale is prohibited; (3) deploys automated systems to help prevent posting of recalled items (4) provides a system whereby users can flag recalled items for removal; and (5) removes recalled items that come to its attention.
Based on what I learned in conversation with CPSC personnel, craigslist has further minimized the posting of recalled items by craigslist users. A very positive result, and one that the CPSC seemed to appreciate.
We have not heard from the CPSC since the conclusion of these productive talks 6 months ago. As always, our door remains open.
This email, and our calls to ABC (not to mention craigslist’s progress on recall items in collaboration with CPSC) fell on deaf ears. If you’re doing a hit piece, you don’t want facts getting in the way.
Recall Roulette? More like Journalistic Ethics Roulette.
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Atheist Yard Sale
May 11, 2013
help get godless liberals out of SC (Greer)
Yes, it is as the title says, come to our moving sale to help two godless liberals get the funds to move to California. What do we have? Books, naturally; some other random stuff that has value but we don’t want to haul across country in our small, fuel efficient car. You’ll be helping to make SC a little more red. Yard sale is FRIDAY MAY 10 starting at 8am and SATURDAY May 11. If it rains on Saturday, like the forecast says, we will also have the moving sale on Sunday, because atheists, remember? Preaching and proselytizing welcome, however it will cost you 10 cents a word to attempt to convert us. Mormons pay double. Mention Richard Dawkins and disavow the Holy Spirit will get you 10% off our already low prices.
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