I used Craigwatch. It was a useful tool - when a search pops, I get an email. I used to use Google Reader for this but when Reader died so did my RSS reading habit, so now email is the only part of my daily workflow that I poll frequently.
The real mystery to me is why Craigslist shut the service down, because (protocols aside) it wasn't fundamentally different from any other way of consuming craigslist. Craigslist's terms of service is actually pretty confusing:
USE. You agree not to use or provide software (except for general purpose web browsers
and email clients, or software expressly licensed by us) or services that interact or
interoperate with CL, e.g. for downloading, uploading, posting, flagging, emailing,
search, or mobile use. Robots, spiders, scripts, scrapers, crawlers, etc. are prohibited, as
are misleading, unsolicited, unlawful, and/or spam postings/email. You agree not to
collect users’ personal and/or contact information (“PI”).
...which if you think about it, bans the use of RSS readers too. There's a short blurb on the RSS page:
craigslist RSS feeds are for your personal use only, and are not available for commercial use without first obtaining a license from craigslist. Please consult our <Terms of Use> for more information on using craigslist RSS feeds.
The only relevant part of the Terms of Use is the section mentioned above, which doesn't really shed any light on the situation.
Honestly this is really confusing. Once again, Craigslist disappoints.
By my reading, prior to Dec 2013, the old terms[1] permitted using personal RSS readers but forbade aggregators. However, the new terms are much more restrictive; they prohibit any use of the craigslist website outside of a web browser. Thus, I think that it is now against the terms to use an RSS reader to read the craigslist RSS feeds! (By the way, it is also against the craigslist terms to write a crawler such as google.com or archive.org even if it respects robots.txt!)
I happened to review these terms because I too was sent a letter from Brian Hennessy representing craigslist last Friday regarding a little Chrome extension I wrote a couple years ago[2].
How can Craigslist accuse you of violating their terms of use? The act of providing a chrome extension does not use their service. Maybe if this was some sort of copyright-circumvention software covered by the DMCA I could understand it. But this sounds like an obvious legal bluff, no?
IANAL either, but I think it would be against craigslist terms for me to continue to use their website while “providing” my accessibility extension. So I could publish the extension, but I would have to stop using craigslist. Additionally, the Chrome Web Store developer agreement[1] prohibits publishing an extension that “knowingly violates a third party’s terms of service”, so my guess is that the lawyer would then ask Google to take it down since any user of the extension would be violating the craigslist terms and thus (after the C&D) I would be violating the Chrome Web Store terms.
It’s pretty airtight, so I took my extension down.
Craigslist has a really bad history of abusing its users. For instance, a few years back they changed the TOS so that CL becomes the copyright holder of all ads placed on the site.
You can safely disregard that part of the TOS. Because law:
(a) A transfer of copyright ownership, other than by operation of law, is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such owner's duly authorized agent.[1]
So trying to fend off padmapper (whether one agrees with that or not) has suddenly become "a really bad history of abusing its users"? I guess scrapers are users.
I think the objection is that the initial knee-jerk reaction to try to fend off scrapers/competitors had a (potentially unintended) consequence of being pretty anti-user by claiming exclusive ownership over the user's content. Craigslist doesn't have to play nice with other services, or aid their competitors, but trying to fight competitors by overreaching and harming your customers isn't OK, which of course, is why they then backtracked on that bad policy after enough public anger.
another service i used a lot was padmapper(?) (CL killed and then stolen the feature) and then another site that allowed me to search on all craigslist sites around the US. i used it to check the price of whatever i was buying locally. or to find things so rare around i am that i would be willing to risk having my money stolen and nothing delivered... i don't even remember the name of the site, but nothing have come even close to filing the gap. one would think ebay is the logical solution, but ebay is filled with crap that it is useless.
The real mystery to me is why Craigslist shut the service down, because (protocols aside) it wasn't fundamentally different from any other way of consuming craigslist. Craigslist's terms of service is actually pretty confusing:
USE. You agree not to use or provide software (except for general purpose web browsers and email clients, or software expressly licensed by us) or services that interact or interoperate with CL, e.g. for downloading, uploading, posting, flagging, emailing, search, or mobile use. Robots, spiders, scripts, scrapers, crawlers, etc. are prohibited, as are misleading, unsolicited, unlawful, and/or spam postings/email. You agree not to collect users’ personal and/or contact information (“PI”).
...which if you think about it, bans the use of RSS readers too. There's a short blurb on the RSS page:
craigslist RSS feeds are for your personal use only, and are not available for commercial use without first obtaining a license from craigslist. Please consult our <Terms of Use> for more information on using craigslist RSS feeds.
The only relevant part of the Terms of Use is the section mentioned above, which doesn't really shed any light on the situation.
Honestly this is really confusing. Once again, Craigslist disappoints.