Due to recent trouble with unwilling data sharing, Craigslist has enacted a new policy: anything posted on the company's site belongs to it, and can't be posted anywhere else without permission. Although this policy was enacted due to problems with an apartment-mapping application called PadMapper, it has far-reaching effects on all Craigslist postings – including property listings.
The new policy means that no apartment listings posted on Craigslist can be posted anywhere else on the web without authorization. When posting a listing on Craigslist, landlords are now forced to click a "continue" button, above which reads "Clicking 'continue' confirms that Craigslist is the exclusive licensee of this content, with the exclusive right to enforce copyrights against anyone copying, republishing, distributing, or preparing derivative works without its consent."
Landlords who post listings as widely as possible in order to garner a greater audience may be miffed at this turn of events. Posting a listing on Craigslist now means that the same listing cannot be posted on Google, Facebook, Yelp, or any other apartment website or marketplace site – all of which have clear "non-exclusive rights" clauses in their posting agreements.