3Taps and PadMapper were companies that partnered to provide an alternative user interface for browsing Craigslist's housing ads.

In response, the court issued an order that set precedent on whether online hosts can use the CFAA to protect public data.

The court held that sending a cease and desist letter and blocking a client's IP address are sufficient to qualify as notice under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

[3] Earlier in 2010, Craigslist's founder Craig Newmark had written that "we take issue with only services which consume a lot of bandwidth.

Most importantly the court held that Craigslist could continue its damages claim on posts made between July 16, 2012 and August 8, 2012.

3Taps likened Nosal to its own case, alleging that Craigslist had taken measures to prevent 3Taps from using the listings in a certain way, rather than enacting a straightforward access revocation.

The court viewed it differently: it considered Craigslist's cease-and-desist letter and IP blocking as access revocation.

[1] The court pointed to language Craigslist's cease-and-desist letter affirming its interpretation, "You ... are hereby prohibited from accessing and using the CL Services for any reason.

3Taps stated that an ordinary user would be more likely to misunderstand Cragslist's IP blocking than, for example, a system that required a password to gain access.

The court found this not of much concern, highlighting that the personalized cease-and-desist letter and subsequent lawsuit provided adequate notice and information.

This, the court found, would be sufficient in differentiating the case from more benign incidents where a user accidentally stumbles upon a protected system.

It promoted the idea of publicly accessible websites as a great social benefit, which a decision for permission controls would harm.

Goldman found it troubling that the court had treated the cease and desist letter as a legally-binding document that revoked 3Taps's authorization to access Craigslist.

The critics pointed out that the entire lawsuit depended on a short, one-week-long period where Cragslist's terms of use required that users assign Craigslist the exclusive copyright of any posted content.

[13] The Electronic Frontier Foundation was critical of the court's decision to uphold Craiglist's copyright claim in their temporary terms of service between July 26, 2012 and August 8, 2012.