> Those two companies killed themselves

I disagree. You're implying that Craigslist was passive, and they were just watching from the sidelines. They weren't. They sued.

> building their entire business off of data that the didn't have the right to use.

This is our main point of contention, and we'll probably just agree to disagree.

> It may be that your personal opinion is that once a piece of text is on the internet, it's fair game to use.

imo it depends on how you use it. Unless I misunderstood something, if we had it your way we wouldn't even be able to write wikipedia articles based on data gleaned from online content even with attribution unless the owner gives permission