(I don't strongly believe in this, but I do thing both IV and Craigslist suck. And it's worse in a way because IV was always evil; Craigslist actually was a force for good at one point, and has become evil.)
The postings themselves belong (in a moral sense; I'm not sure what the current craigslist license is) to the people posting them. If I post my room for rent, I would be happy to have more people see the listing, especially with a clean UI (like padmapper). I'd be aggrieved if Craig Newmark blocked people from seeing the listing. The "server load" issue is a red herring; people have been more than willing to pay a reasonable fee to offset that, and it's a minimal amount of load to begin with.
It's even more egregious in the case of a posting tool, which is what this appears to be.
I agree IV is a vastly bigger deal; I personally just soft-boycott Craigslist, but if I had a chance to destroy IV while taking only moderate legal or financial damage, I'd do so. But I think a lot of that is due to the patent system being totally horrible, and copyright being only moderately broken (and trademark being only slightly broken). If Craig/Buckmaster had the ability to use the patent system to kill services which might compete with them, they probably would claim it was "helping their users by making the market more comprehensive and efficient", too.
Sure, it's the KKK vs. Augusta National, but mostly a difference in degree.
The postings themselves belong (in a moral sense; I'm not sure what the current craigslist license is) to the people posting them. If I post my room for rent, I would be happy to have more people see the listing, especially with a clean UI (like padmapper). I'd be aggrieved if Craig Newmark blocked people from seeing the listing. The "server load" issue is a red herring; people have been more than willing to pay a reasonable fee to offset that, and it's a minimal amount of load to begin with.
It's even more egregious in the case of a posting tool, which is what this appears to be.
I agree IV is a vastly bigger deal; I personally just soft-boycott Craigslist, but if I had a chance to destroy IV while taking only moderate legal or financial damage, I'd do so. But I think a lot of that is due to the patent system being totally horrible, and copyright being only moderately broken (and trademark being only slightly broken). If Craig/Buckmaster had the ability to use the patent system to kill services which might compete with them, they probably would claim it was "helping their users by making the market more comprehensive and efficient", too.
Sure, it's the KKK vs. Augusta National, but mostly a difference in degree.