Craigslist moves to shut down Sacramentan's blog

Like an online Goliath girding for battle, Craigslist.org moved Thursday to quash a Sacramento man who launched the first national blog about the classified ad Web site that has successfully cultivated a populist community and image.

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster fired off an e-mail to blogger Tim White that told the 38-year-old to change the name of his site, a move that would make it tough to find.

"We need you to stop using the infringing domain CRAIGSLISTBLOG.ORG immediately, and arrange for transfer of it to us asap – using/selling/transferring infringing domains is illegal, and penalties up to $100,000 per domain can be applied," Buckmaster wrote to White.

After White refused, Buckmaster introduced him to his high-powered legal team – via a follow-up e-mail. Craigslist also started a blog of its own, blog.craigslist.org, Thursday to compete with White's craigslistblog.org.

White, who splits his time between Sacramento and San Francisco, where he runs two Web sites, said he had no intention of taking his blog down and conceded on only one, relatively minor point. He agreed in an e-mail reply to Buckmaster to modify his "Best of Craigslist" feature to avoid taking any content from Craigslist itself.

"I think you have received bad legal counsel and that this is potentially a really bad PR move for cl," wrote White, who until Thursday was an unabashed fan of Craigslist.

Within minutes, White said, he found another greeting from Buckmaster in his e-mail box, this one forwarding the case to Buckmaster's legal counsel in Seattle.

"Grace, unfortunately it sounds like Tim may prefer to go the legal route here. Unless you hear otherwise from him shortly, please proceed," the e-mail said in an address to Grace Stanton of Perkins Coie, which boasts more than 650 attorneys in 14 offices across the United States.

Then, in a more ominous warning directly to White, who was cc'd on the e-mail, Buckmaster went on: "Tim, FYI, in addition to Craigslist, Perkins Coie also does intellectual property work for Google, and for a lot of other prominent companies.

"But if you're confident you have better legal information regarding Craigslist's trademarks and copyrighted information than we do, then of course you should have nothing to worry about."

Stanton, reached by phone in Seattle, said she could not comment. Buckmaster and other officials at Craigslist in San Francisco did not respond to phone calls or e-mails.

Lawrence Townsend, an intellectual property attorney in San Francisco, said the crux of the matter may come down to commercialism.

"On an infringement claim, there has to be some kind of commercial activity. Otherwise the defense would be that it's not any different than any other gripe site," he said.

After looking over White's blog and noting there was no advertising there, Townsend said, "I find it interesting that there's no reference to why it's an infringement without reference to commercial activity."

The news surprised many who see Craigslist, a lean site where users buy and sell anything and everything, as a populist, anti- establishment company.

"It's frankly quite shocking," said Karl Barnhart, managing partner at CoreBrand, a brand-consulting firm in New York City. "It's incredibly surprising the approach they are taking. This is not gonna win them any friends or any supporters. And I've been a huge fan of Craigslist for years."

Barnhart said the opposite approach would have worked much better for Craigslist.

"To me, they have an opportunity to embrace something like this and make it an advantage and make it fit within their corporate style, make it appear as a proof point that they are this anti-establishment company."

While the vast majority of classified ads placed on Craigslist are free, the company charges $10 for New York City apartment ads if they are placed by brokers, and $25 to $75 for recruitment ads in 11 cities. No banner ads appear on its site. A leading classified ad consultancy projects that Craigslist will gross more than $80 million in annual revenue this year.

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Mark Melnicoe, (916) 321-1976.