Do you think most people listing ads on CL read the terms and understand them as you did? (Or were the terms confusing?) Are CL's terms different from what one would normally expect from a newspaper? That is, would you expect that the newspaper would require an exclusive license and prohibit you from running your ad anywhere else?
Yes, they are. Normally if someone wants an exclusive right to content they pay the producer for them. Virtually everyone else asks for a non-exclusive license. This is very different and has been discussed here on HN before.
And didn't CL change their terms (excl-->nonexcl) after some blogger posted about them? And didn't they make some changes to their site (collaborate with a maps provider so users can now get geo mappings) after filing this lawsuit? I've already forgotten now. This case just seems laughable to me. But what do I know.
