There was definitely some entitlement among the community, but I don't think that should silence the call for better services (and API enforcement) from these providers (or, hopefully alternatives all together).
If there is API access it should be enforced with more care or not made available at all. Personally, I was skeptical that PadMapper would go anywhere (expecting CL to kill the scraping early on). Much to my surprise it stuck around and furthermore was really useful. I'm not mad that it is gone: I read the TOS from CL - it's totally their right to do that. It just hurts end users which is the problem.
And sure, I do believe it's dangerous (and can be misleading to users [like when your data access gets pulled]) to build a product entirely on a platform, but it's almost unavoidable. (That's why you are the platform). Companies like PadMapper are going to try to improve where you have left off. (They probably didn't even register on CL's logs until they queried a lot which might explain the delayed C&D).
Let our entitlement / disappointment be a message to these companies on how to improve their services (ideally they could improve in a way that makes them more money). Or hopefully fuel for others to build competing products.
If there is API access it should be enforced with more care or not made available at all. Personally, I was skeptical that PadMapper would go anywhere (expecting CL to kill the scraping early on). Much to my surprise it stuck around and furthermore was really useful. I'm not mad that it is gone: I read the TOS from CL - it's totally their right to do that. It just hurts end users which is the problem.
And sure, I do believe it's dangerous (and can be misleading to users [like when your data access gets pulled]) to build a product entirely on a platform, but it's almost unavoidable. (That's why you are the platform). Companies like PadMapper are going to try to improve where you have left off. (They probably didn't even register on CL's logs until they queried a lot which might explain the delayed C&D).
Let our entitlement / disappointment be a message to these companies on how to improve their services (ideally they could improve in a way that makes them more money). Or hopefully fuel for others to build competing products.