That doesn't necessarily mean that Craigslist has standing to sue on it's users behalf however. Also most of those listings don't merit copyright protection, because they are statements of fact not creative works.
The user owns the post and grants CL the right to display it, and the TOS also grants CL the right to prevent others from displaying it without CL's permission.
If the user isn't posting a creative work just a statement of fact, it doesn't what the user says--it's not protected by copyright.
>the TOS also grants CL the right to prevent others from displaying it without CL's permission.
Just because the ToS says it doesn't mean it will work. Recently a judge said that a copyright troll called Rightshaven didn't have standing to sue on behalf of copyright holders for works that they licensed.
Assemblages of fact are protected by copyright tpateck has commented in the previous threads on Padmapper about this. This is why a Farmers Almanac is under copyright and I cannot wholesale copy a phonebook or Encyclopedia Britannica without infringing their rights.
Regarding Righthaven, the original media company never gave Righthaven control of the copyright of their data, just the right to sue. This is why it was struck down.
As for Righthaven's lack of standing to sue over Review-Journal content, Hunt wrote the recently unsealed lawsuit contract between Righthaven and Stephens Media -- called the Strategic Alliance Agreement (SAA) -- clearly leaves Stephens Media in control of the copyrights and gives Righthaven only the right to sue.
In order to file lawsuits, copyright plaintiffs have to have actual control of the copyrights, not just the right to sue, Hunt found.
Phone books are not protected by copyright unless there is something original about their selection or organization.
Assemblages of fact aren't protected, only the selection and arrangement of those facts. In addition the selection and arrangement has to be "creative."
The selection is definitely not a creative act on craigslist's part b/c they don't select anything, users post the information.
Craigslist posting selection is nonexistent. Therefore they are only left with "creative" arrangement for protection.
You could argue that the arrangement is a creative act. I don't think the arrangement counts because they are only using a subset of craigslist and that is merely arranged by geographical location, definitely not an original "creative" arrangement, but it doesn't matter because Padmapper isn't copying the arrangement.
>Regarding Righthaven, the original media company never gave Righthaven control of the copyright of their data, just the right to sue. This is why it was struck down.
The judge in the Righthaven case said this...
"Because the SAA (lawsuit contract) prevents Righthaven from obtaining any of the exclusive rights necessary to maintain standing in a copyright infringement action, the court finds that Righthaven lacks standing in this case,"
Craigslist ToS doesn't grant them exclusive rights, thus by that judge's definition they don't have standing to sue.
