[res0nat0r]

Can't we just ban Techdirt submissions for their terrible and obviously biased reporting? Everything from them is blatantly one sided and not even trying to actually represent the truth.

From 3Taps own website right now:

"As part of the settlement, 3taps and its founder, Greg Kidd, have agreed to pay craigslist $1 million, all of which must then be paid by craigslist to the EFF, which supported 3taps' position on the CFAA in this litigation, and continues to do great work for Internet freedom"

[dang]

Techdirt is in a category of sites whose submissions are penalized by default on HN. This category is for sources that produce a lot of fluff but also the occasionally substantive piece. There are various ways for the penalty to be lifted, one of which is moderator review, which is how it got lifted here.

Your description might be fair in general, but this article is more substantive than the typical riler-upper. If you know of something that it misrepresents, by all means correct the record. But it doesn't misrepresent the info you quoted—on the contrary, it communicates it clearly and includes the exact same quote.

[tptacek]

2nd graf: suggests Craigslist "abused" the CFAA to "kill" a company. Instead, Craigslist relied on the one private cause of action in the US code specific to enforcement of ToS's --- a limited cause, with limited damages. It was inaccurate to call this an "abuse" (it's the whole intent of 1030g!) and misleading to invoke the CFAA boogeyman over it.

4th graf: Claims Craigslist relied on a "tortured" definition of CFAA, linking to another Techdirt story about a judge's upholding of Craigslist's claims on two different counts. "Torturous" here means "the suggestion that access was unauthorized after Padmapper received a cease and desist from Craigslist's lawyers, and changed IP addresses to evade a ban.

6th graf: Techdirt grossly misrepresents Orin Kerr, perhaps assuming readers won't click through to the Volokh story they quote out of context. Kerr sees the ruling as a missed opportunity to more rigidly define "unauthorized access" as "circumvention of technical controls" but does not disagree with the ruling. HN readers in general would not be happier in a world where Kerr's view of the CFAA was reliably enforced.

Most importantly, I think: the article also never makes the argument it teases in its headline: at no point is it ever made clear how Newmark has "made the CFAA worse".

This is a defect density rate worthy of early-period PHP Wordpress.

Your normal instinct about Techdirt is almost always going to be right. It's not a good site. I'm glad it's penalized. Penalize it more.

[ericd]

Hey Thomas, big fan of your comments generally, but you're mischaracterizing what we did. We never issued another server request to them again after the C&D, let alone changed IP addresses to evade a ban afterwards. This is uncontested, and we weren't included in the CFAA claims. We were fighting for the right to summarize listings and link to them, not for the right to access their servers when they don't want us to, nor to include the full text of the postings on our site.

[tptacek]

Sorry, I was working from the link Techdirt provided to back up the "tortured" application of CFAA. I really wasn't trying to characterize exactly what your team was doing. But I was also imprecise and I sometimes forget that the principals of these stories are on HN, too. I apologize.

[ericd]

No problem, it's hard to know what's going on when every writeup of a story gets at least 30% of the details wrong :-)

[dang]

OK, those sound like good points. We've taken the CFAA bit out of the headline and can swap the URL to a better article if there is one.

[crusso]

I found the article to be misleading and of pretty poor journalistic quality. It reads like a rant and I would hope that HN would not make an exception for a Techdirt rant.

For example: the line, "Craig himself has contributed to this misleading perception with this tweet implying he's giving his own money to EFF" was especially confusing since the proceeds of a lawsuit are in fact "his own money".

[dang]

Fully agreed about rants in general. But I also agree with the commenters pointing out that complying with a lawsuit settlement is really not the same thing as a donation. That, plus that the story is significant, is why we haven't penalized this article the way we normally would. I'd be happy to swap it out for a more substantive, less ranty article, if one exists.

[pdkl95]

> biased reporting

The idea that "unbiased" reporting exists is a modern myth. There is bias in simply deciding the topic to report on.

The modern idea that "unbiased" is somehow a virtue just leads to the CNN phenomenon where every story has to have two sides regardless of what the situation actually is.

One of the purposes of journalism is to make the decisions about what is "news" and what is junk. Obviously these criteria are going to depend on a lot of personal interpretation, so the key to good reporting is to know and understand how the reporter judges a story - their bias - so their reporting can be properly weighted.

In this sense, techdirt is quite open an obvious with their bias, and is fairly consistent in style, which is something I wish I saw a lot more at "news" websites.

(how you interpret that bias is another matter entirely)

As for their content, while I agree techdirt can be one sided at times, I have never seen any serious lies, either direct or by omission. Maybe I've just missed them?

Speaking of which, I don't see how reposting a quote that was included in the techdirt article is supposed to be evidence of them being "one sided" or "not even trying to actually represent the truth".

[higherpurpose]

That doesn't sound like a "donation", though? At the very least Craiglist tried to portray it as something they're doing out of the goodness of their hearts.

[lmm]

I'm sure Craigslist could have negotiated for a settlement that would have involved money (perhaps less money) going directly to them. And if Craigslist had done nothing the EFF wouldn't be getting any money. So they deserve at least some of the credit.

[res0nat0r]

Giving million bucks to someone else sounds pretty good to me and fits every definition of donation I've ever heard of.

[teacup50]

Giving away a $1M settlement is clearly a donation, and it's "out of the goodness of their hearts" when compared to the obvious alternative: keeping the money.

[em3rgent0rdr]

I wouldn't consider the result of legal settlement to be a "donation". A donation is a voluntary transfer of money. Had craigslist received $1M from a settlement and then voluntarily sent EFF $1M without being specified to in the legal settlement, then that would be a donation. The correct interpretation is that the $1M transfer is part of a legal settlement to resolve a lawsuit. I haven't followed this lawsuit too closely, but it sounds like craigslist might not have had a "open-and-closed" case, hence the need to offer these amenable terms to sweeten the terms of surrender, and thus hasten the resolution.

"As part of the settlement, 3taps and its founder, Greg Kidd, have agreed to pay craigslist $1 million, all of which must then be paid by craigslist to the EFF, "

[zck]

Yes; specifically, if the proposed settlement was "3taps will give Craigslist $1 million, which Craigslist will have no restrictions on", then 3taps might not have agreed to it.

[res0nat0r]

Maybe CL initiated the requirement that the money was going to go to the EFF after being paid to them? Seems like most of the ill-will related speculation might be just that until there is any evidence either way...

[taejo]

If they wanted to donate the money to the EFF, they wouldn't have needed to bind themselves to that in the settlement.

[dogweather]

It's not specified in the legal documents. Take a look at the PDF's.

It's only "specified" in Kidd's own blog post.

[IBM]

Techdirt's usual bias fits in-line with HN's bias so that doesn't seem likely.