If you want to advertise something for sale on craigslist, you’re now going to have to make sure you don’t post it anywhere else. That only applies of course, if you give damn about the rules.

Apparently, the online classifieds website has just added a new user agreement, which states that any listing posted on craigslist has to be exclusive to them – they will own the rights to the content, which means it cannot be reposted on any other website.

As of now, this is the message you’ll see when you’re about to confirm a listing on Craigslist:

“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.”

Obviously, this is going to upset a number of users, as in most cases it makes sense to post a listing in more than one place if you’re serious about selling something.

It’s likely that the new rules have something to do with Craigslist’s ongoing dispute with the PadMapper apartment listings site. A one-man show created by Eric DeMenthon, PadMapper makes searching for an apartment easier  by overlaying available pads on a Google Map. It allows apartment-hunters to search according to parameters like floor space, rental costs and number of bedrooms and bathrooms. By overlaying its results on the Google Maps interface, users can then choose the best apartment in their most desirable location.

Although it hasn’t made any official statement, it’s no secret that Craigslist are furious with PadMapper, as the website scrapes a large number of its listings directly from the site. Previously, it was doing so via Craigslist’s servers, until its access was blocked just over a month ago.

Craigslist might have thought they’d put an end to the issue, but just days after this route was blocked DeMenthon found a way round it, and now scrapes listings through an API supplied by 3taps.

Whether or not anyone will pay attention to Craigslist’s new rules remains to be seen; it seems unlikely to me that they would actually try to enforce them. Instead, it seems more likely that be that Craigslist is just trying to strengthen its position ahead of its upcoming court action against PadMapper and 3taps, who it’s suing for copyright infringement.