I could fairly criticize them for tempting students to eat awful food though, I suppose. Something like, "How dare McDonalds give away their hamburgers!" ;)
Well, that would make no sense in comparison as having a certain level of open API access is not the same thing as giving away your entire business. In fact, if you do it well, surely it drives costumers to you as it widens their available exposure.
CL has determined that displaying their listings on sites other than their own hurts rather than helps their brand which is why they don't offer an API.
Which loops back to what I was saying to start with, which is that is a business and design decision that it is completely fair to criticise if people want to.
Craigslist have decided on a strategy, and it might go well for them, or it might not. Given the amount of apparent annoyance they have stirred up, it might well backfire.
No, they don't owe anyone anything and if they decided to shut down the entire service tomorrow so they could spend more time bowling, that would be completely within their rights.
But people are free to critisise them for their actions if they wish and so I was taking issue with flatline's original assertion that discussing issues of fairness on API access was effectively outside the remit of fair criticism of the product itself.
I could fairly criticize them for tempting students to eat awful food though, I suppose. Something like, "How dare McDonalds give away their hamburgers!" ;)