A couple weeks ago, apartment finding map service PadMapper received a cease and desist letter from Craigslist demanding that they remove Craiglist listings from their maps. The move made PadMapper a far less useful tool for apartment hunting, and seemed like a low blow from Craigslist, a site that techies normally hold in high esteem.
But today, PadMapper’s founder Eric Dementhon announced on the PadMapper blog that he’s found a way to include Craiglist’s listings on the site that’s “legally kosher,” and plans to re-implement them ASAP. Mr. DeMenthon admits that the move is “somewhat dickish,” but decided that he’d rather inconvenience Craigslist than PadMapper’s millions of monthly users.
Writes Mr. DeMenthon:
If it takes half of PadMapper’s millions of monthly users 3 hours longer now to find an apartment, that’s over 350 man-years wasted per month, or 5 lifetimes. Sorry for cursing, but fuck that. Seriously, fuck that completely. That really pisses me off….So, effective as soon as I can bring the new code up (almost certainly by the time you read this), I’m bringing the Craigslist search results back.
PadMapper will now use a Craigslist API provided by 3taps.
Score one for the underdog.
UPDATE: Mr. DeMenthon has since edited the post to take out the curse words. “Update: Edited for language, it was immature of me to curse, sorry.”
