Filed under: Internet, Features, News, Web services, DLS Interviews
Jim Buckmaster Q&A: Why Craigslist banned listpic
While it was pretty clear that listpic was violating Craiglist's terms of service, the site was awfully useful, and many users said they found themselves spending a lot more time browsing classifieds because of it. Listpic founder Ryan Sit has been engaged in a back and forth with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark in the user forums.
We wanted to get to the bottom of the issues, so we shot out an email to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster. Here are his responses:
Brad Linder: My understanding is that Listpic violates Craigslist terms of service because it is a derivative work, which is prohibited. Is this correct, and if so, why did you wait until now to block the site?
Jim Buckmaster: several violations, including mass harvesting of content for re-display. enforcement actions are prioritized according to the harm being caused.
BL: How serious were the bandwidth problems listpic was causing?
JM: each page load on listpic was consuming at least 20x more craigslist server resources than the same page would if it were efficiently implemented in-house -- not fair to the 99.9% of our users who are accessing craigslist natively, and experiencing periodic image-loading outages/issues as a result of this external service being used by 0.1% of craigslist users
BL: Had you corresponded with Ryan Sit at listpic before blocking the site?
JM: i had not - there is no way for a 3rd party to offer such a service that would make efficient use of our server resources and comply with our terms of use, so there wasn't a lot to talk about, other than "please stop"
BL: Many users say they found themselves perusing more classifieds because of listpic... did you notice any increase in traffic after listpic became popular?
JM: overall traffic was likely reduced due to server resource contention - activity by 0.1% of users slowing down access for the other 99.9%
BL: Some have questioned whether this is really about bandwidth, or the fact that listpic was generating advertising revenue based on Craiglist ads. Did that play any role in your decision?
JM: some of our users told us they felt it was exploitative and tacky, but it was not central to this decision
BL: In the user forums, you said that you "like the visual aspect," do you have any plans to implement your own graphical interface for Craiglist in the future?
JM: we do plan to offer an image-browsing interface
BL: Are there any circumstances under which you could see yourselves allowing listpic to start up again in the future?
JM: no
Ryan Sit says he was unaware that he was causing any bandwidth problems for Craiglist, and that the reason he had advertising on the site was to pay for servers, IT, and bandwidth costs.
Sit says he'd be willing to remove the ads if there were another way to pay for the costs.
Ryan Sit says he was unaware that he was causing any bandwidth problems for Craiglist, and that the reason he had advertising on the site was to pay for servers, IT, and bandwidth costs.
Sit says he'd be willing to remove the ads if there were another way to pay for the costs.
After spending the better part of an hour on 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Grammar freak said 3:01PM on 6-08-2007
The craigslist people seem to dislike caps and punctuation quite a bit.
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guy said 10:34PM on 6-08-2007
Looks like Mr. Craigslist is not only stubborn, but also stupid. If he made nice with the other guy, he'd have a great feature for his 1993-looking website. Now he made an enemy with that guy. He's going to have to develop that picture feature on his own and I'm sure it won't be of post-1993 quality since craigslist seems to be perpetually stuck in the early 90's thanks to his ineptitude.
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matt said 1:26AM on 6-09-2007
hey easy on 1993 LOL I kinda like the quaint look of CL I also loved listpic though.
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PJ Ferodynamics said 10:23AM on 6-09-2007
Well, do we know how bad Listpic abused Craigslist's servers?
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Brak said 5:00PM on 6-09-2007
JM Is throwing around a lot of made up statistics.
Each listpic pave view uses 20x the bandwidth? Well, since the craiglist layout sucks terribly, it is likely that a regular craigslist user has to view more than 20 pages to get useful results.
Irritatingly, many of the links on craiglist go to go to blank "this was removed by the community" pages.
They keep claiming that their design is efficient simplicity. Now it just stinks of arrogance.
Know what listpic should do? They should set up their own classifieds. Just provide the functionality craigslist users have been begging for and beat them at their own game. That would be a more satisfing outcome than craislist making minor updates to their site.
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Andrew Schrock said 2:34PM on 6-10-2007
Buckmaster is playing loose with statistics and Craiglist is hideously ugly, but this illustrates a downside of "mash up" software on the Internet. If a killer app springs up based around a website or publicly accessible API, the company may get miffed. The way the Internet is designed, bandwidth is money. Buckmaster feels he is protecting his company's assets and usability. He is rather backwards-thinking, but there is a certain logic there, very common among older developers and people in the business world. Addressing this mindset and providing revenue generating opportunities is one of the biggest obstacles to mash-ups going mainstream and becoming profitable.
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wraith808 said 11:22AM on 6-11-2007
It seems that this .1% was very vocal. I think that a larger number of people were using this than he will admit.
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Bent said 11:53PM on 6-14-2007
Whatever the deal. I just punched craigslist in the face. Losers...
I kinda hope the site dies now...
Thats how much I enjoyed listpic.
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henry said 8:31PM on 7-27-2007
I'm so glad to read comments from intelligent people and not from lame CL users.
The CL strategy is inherently flawed:
1 let users post unacceptable content.
2 block first without explanation or communication
3 ask questions later and watch users grovel and humiliate themselves to get unblocked.
Mr Skankmaster is a modern day nazi general in disguise.
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