
New York Times Forces Apple to Pull Popular ‘Pulse’ iPad Newsreader - 00joe
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/06/new-york-times-forces-apple-to-pull-popular-pulse-ipad-newsreader/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29
======
tjmaxal
If the NY times hates people using their RSS feed why don't they just cut it
off?

It's no wonder print media is dying when you are willing to spend money on
stupid legal fights when all you really have to do is police your own policies
better. This reminds me of another HN article from this week where print media
was seeking all kinds of govt regulations to prop up their dying industry,
That kind of wasteful rent seeking behavior is exactly why most people don't
care if the industry dies.

They brought it upon themselves by failing to innovate.

~~~
mechanical_fish
It's not that they are not _trying_ to innovate. It's that they are trying to
navigate a rapidly changing environment in a big battleship that is slowly
sinking.

The hell of being the _NYT_ is that you're too big to pivot all the time, so
you need to pick a plan and stick with it. And if, ten years from now, it
turns out you picked the wrong plan, you will feel awful because you lost the
_New York Times_ , for gods sake, when all you had to do was follow the soon-
to-be-obvious-in-hindsight Plan X.

What is happening here seems clear: the _Times_ is freaking out about iOS
apps. Apple has cleverly offered the dead-trees publishers something that
looks like the model they know, where they control the experience and the
design and, not incidentally, the ad placement. And now the Times gets
confused. Do they buy Apple's offer? The way the music publishers did? If they
do, will their glass look half-empty in five years, or half-full? Or should
they continue the earlier plan and try to compete on the open web where the
mass of people are? And can either of these models support anything that
resembles the existing staff and properties of the _Times_?

~~~
iamdave
You bring up a good paradigm, here and it's one that distresses me when
looking at the big picture of what's happening with Apple and the consumption
junction society we're in now.

Apple wants (probably not consciously, or at least overtly) to be the de facto
hub for content distribution, and their hardware wants to be the de facto hub
for content consumption. Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with
this (though some of us would like other options), but it's the way Apple is
doing this that causes contention among the ranks.

Even though I do not own one (I did spend about 30 minutes at Best Buy reading
the NY Times Editor's Choice App), it feels very much like Apple is renting an
experience to users, instead of selling one. A casualty of the digital age
perhaps? Is the idea of owning content a dead one?

A question for another time.

~~~
protomyth
I think Netflix is doing more to prove people are ok with renting rather than
owning. Apple is still more own than rent with iTunes and the App Store. Heck,
37signals and their contemporaries proved a lot of people are ok renting apps.

~~~
icefox
Well to be fair there are very few movies I would watch more then once, while
that is not true of music. For books and Movies I have no problem renting. Of
course used books off amazon almost feels like renting because they can be so
cheap.

------
sfk
"The Pulse News Reader app, makes commercial use of the NYTimes.com and
Boston.com RSS feeds, in violation of their Terms of Use. Thus, the use of our
content is unlicensed. The app also frames the NYTimes.com and Boston.com
websites in violation of their respective Terms of Use."

I completely agree with this. People should stop arguing copyright matters on
a purely technical level. Intent matters. The intent here is that other people
should not make money off the RSS feed. This is _exactly_ what happened in
this case, so NYT's reaction is perfectly natural.

~~~
clammer
Actions have a consequence despite intent. If you put an RSS feed on the
public Internet you made that feed public, despite what your intent was.

Saying otherwise, would be like saying that shooting a gun into a crowd and
killing someone isn't murder if you intended for the bullet to make it through
the crowd without hitting anyone.

~~~
smallblacksun
That's not how copyright/licensing works. You can distribute content with
legal requirements about what people are allowed to do with that content.

~~~
chc
An RSS reader cannot reasonably be said to be "selling" the NYT's content any
more than the iPhone or HTC Evo can be said to do so because they're
commercial products that display the NYT homepage.

------
natrius
Their Terms of Service are unenforceable. You don't need a license to
distribute code that asks the New York Times for their resources. The New York
Times responds to those requests by saying "OK" and transmitting their
content. They're free to stop doing that.

If this were an Android app, there would still be ways to make money off of
the app even if Google removed it from the store. Practically speaking, it
probably wouldn't be very successful, but it's nice to know that the option is
there.

------
sil3ntmac
This literally just happened to me today as well. A client of mine has an app
where he posts links from time to time to various sites. Users can then click
these links and an in-app browser slides over and loads the page. After I
uploaded the app, he posted a link to a story on the L.A. Times website, as
well as the WSJ website. Today the app was rejected, and we got a feedback
response from Apple:

Thank you for your response and prompt attention to the Trademark issue.
Please provide documentation evidencing that you have authorization from Los
Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal to include content from their sites.
Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal have previously objected to
other applications that feed from their sites, and believes that such features
infringe their rights.

I thought about Apple's response for a while, and decided that LAT and WSJ
should not have this kind of control over who gets to link to their website.
Moreover, it's not like the app scrapes ads off of all their pages... the
papers still generate page views and ad revenue, which in the end is what they
want, right?

------
gojomo
The definition of 'noncommercial' is a real mess. Even major 'free' browsers
are commercial -- as they come from giant for-profit companies (Microsoft,
Google) who ultimately hope to collect profits elsewhere due to their 'free'
browser distribution. Do IE and Chrome violate the NYTimes license when they
view NYTimes RSS feeds?

~~~
BrandonM
The point is not that they allow the viewing of the NYT RSS feed, but that
they ship with it by default, and use it as a selling point for their
application. I don't agree with NYT's viewpoint here, but I can see where they
are coming from. I think the Wired article went a bit over the top in saying
that any piece of commercial software is disallowed from displaying NYT
content.

~~~
gojomo
If the NYTimes complaint had been narrowly focused on the display of NYTimes
content in promotional images/text, or even its default inclusion, I'd have
more sympathy.

Instead, the claim they're making suggests it's wrong for the app to display
NYTimes content, even at the direction/configuration of the end-user. That's a
problematic argument for the whole stack of 'commercial' tools used to read
the NYTimes, from the computer and OS through the mobile data provider/ISP up
through the browser and feed-reader apps.

------
NathanKP
They'll probably be even less happy with Apple's new Safari 5 reader:

[http://experimentgarden.com/safari-5-reader-why-it-wont-
work...](http://experimentgarden.com/safari-5-reader-why-it-wont-work-for-
long)

~~~
nooneelse
Maybe phones that already know the user's credit card number could keep track
of a micro-payment each time the readability feature is used on a
participating and non-content-obscuring site and send off a few dollars every
N uses.

~~~
NathanKP
More likely they will just start putting ads in the article content itself.

~~~
Calamitous
And that would be different how, exactly?

------
zmmmmm
What interests me here is that Apple is now the arbiter of these things rather
than the courts. If Pulse was released as a desktop application and the NYT
sent them a cease and desist then Pulse could refuse and eventually have their
day in court to claim fair use, or that they are in compliance with the terms
of use or _whatever_.

However now we have Steve Jobs sitting in the place of the courts. His
decision is arbitrary and Pulse has no avenue for appeal other than by
pleading and praying for his mercy.

Regardless of whether he decides the app can stay or go it is _utterly wrong_
that he is being given this privilege. I hope that content providers and app
developers alike look at this with revulsion and seriously consider other ways
to move forward than placing so much power in one individual's hands.

------
jokermatt999
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1413335>

Similar story from AllThingsD, and HNs discussion

------
grantheaslip
Good to see nobody is blaming Apple for this; there are legitimate problems
with Apple's handling of the App Store (though perhaps taken too far
sometimes), but this is clearly not their fault.

~~~
ajscherer
I think this points out a huge problem with the App Store. It shows that if a
large company feels threatened by your app, all they have to do is send a
legal threat to Apple and your app is toast.

If users were free to acquire software for their devices without Apple's
interference, the authors would have the option to continue distributing the
app and take their chances in court with the NYT.

Apple doesn't stand to lose much if they have to remove an app from the app
store (even a top selling app), but they stand to lose a lot in a lawsuit. The
cost of litigation might exceed what Apple stands to make on the app
regardless of whether they win or lose a lawsuit. Therefore the App Store
model gives companies leverage to destroy developers' apps and by extension to
determine what kind of apps are available to users

~~~
wmf
I don't think the App Store matters here. Thanks to the DMCA, the NYT can have
_any_ site taken down (at least temporarily).

------
gojomo
Does Pulse identify itself in its User-Agent when fetching the RSS feed? If so
NYTimes could have had their tech staff, not their legal staff, handle this.

~~~
slig
In-house legal staff must be free and have to be used to be justified.

------
pierrefar
I know I should get outraged and amused by this incompetence, but this is just
sad.

The NYT company invested in Auttomatic (Wordpress makers; see
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/business/media/23nytimes.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/business/media/23nytimes.html)
) and they got FiveThirtyEight, a blog, under their wing. Clearly they're
thinking about what's next in media and experimenting, and then they turn
around and do this mindless move. This kind of confusion makes me sad because
it's a sign there is still a lot of inertia against their necessary evolution.

~~~
logic
You haven't seen anything yet. They'll be moving their content behind a pay-
wall in 2011:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/media/21times.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/media/21times.html)

This move (going after perceived commercial use of their public RSS feeds) is
actually consistent with their apparent current survival strategy.

------
troystribling
Just noticed that it is back in the app store.
[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pulse-news-
reader/id371088673...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pulse-news-
reader/id371088673?mt=8)

------
surlyadopter
Another great example of how lawyers ruin everything.

------
sandee
I think, NYT and other publishers think Ipad as a possible revenue source for
them. Quite different from PC ecosystem.

In future they may have their own custom app, and would like people to buy
news straight from them, or they can group together the publishers to create a
aggregator app, where the newspapers are making the money, instead of Tech-App
Middle man.

It will take some time for them to figure out how to make this model work.
Till then be prepared to get a legal assault from them on any news apps.

------
steve19
Its back in the store

<http://twitter.com/pulsepad/status/15725974258>

------
kmfrk
This is yet another mind-boggling case of people _punishing their own fans_ ;
we are not talking miscreants of ill will. Judging by the time between the
WWDC display and reaction, they seem to have given it little thought.

If people don't like fans using the RSS, truncate or remove it altogether. It
is beyond me that NYT, who seem so willing to innovate and understand the new
frontiers of technology, would add themselves to the list of these weird
cases.

Also, The Barbra Streisand Effect for reference-dropping measure.

------
perlpimp
What happened is that they chose legal route to enforce their business model,
not technical one. If they did use technology , they'd just force login to
load RSS feed and that would be the end of it.

As well they use the legal route to put focus on themselves. Like "hey we
aren't dead yet!". And while annoying digerati , they managed to spread the
word about themselves across so much of a news medium.

Just a ploy to gain market share.

------
mawhidby
It appears as though the Pulse app is back in the App Store
[http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftwa...](http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=371088673&mt=8&ign-
mpt=uo%3D6)

------
davidedicillo
Good thing NY Times didn't realize Safari can use as RSS reader, otherwise
they would have ask Apple to remove it from their OS. Sad to see these
companies not grasping how the industry is changing in our times.

------
adammichaelc
From danh "Pulse mysteriously appears again in App store, without explanation.
<http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/08/pulse-ipad-2/> "

------
brandnewlow
Isn't the solution to rate limit RSS pulls and charge developers for overages?
Just treat it like an API and charge for conspicuous use like every other web
app out there and be done with it.

------
dalore
So does that mean if you add the RSS to your google reader, google is then
breaking their tos because google display ads?

------
JoeAltmaier
Perhaps NYT wants Pulse to come to a license agreement. Its just business.

------
ahoyhere
1\. Pulse includes NYT as a preset in the feed reader

2\. Apple shows off Pulse at WWDC

3\. Pulse gets download 35,000 times, delivering the (limited) NYT feed to
35,000 eyeballs who might not otherwise check it out regularly

4\. NYT forces Apple to take down Pulse.

It's not an issue of misuse of content. It is a preset. Pulse is not SELLING
the NYT's content, they are including the feed URL as one of several defaults
in their multi-purpose feed reader because they think it's nice and their
audience will like it.

Now the app will go back online... and get many more sales because of this
exposure... and all those new eyeballs will have to exert EFFORT to view the
NYT's feeds.

Say it with me, HNers... s-t-u-p-i-d.

~~~
danh
5\. Pulse mysteriously appears again in App store, without explanation.

<http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/08/pulse-ipad-2/>

~~~
ugh
And nothing seems to have changed. The developers don’t know why it’s back and
the screenshots still show the New York Times.

Curious story. If there’s one good thing about this whole thing, than it’s
that a lot more people now know about this app and will maybe even buy it.

My little theory is that the New York Times saw the bad press rolling in and
called up Apple.

~~~
farmerbuzz
The fact that there is some set of companies that can "call up Apple" really
turns me off to iPhone development. I certainly can't "call up Apple".

~~~
megablast
This is no different to any other company. There are some company who can call
up Microsoft, or even call up people on the Linux dev team, if they know them.

This drastically reduces who you can develop for, and is one of the silliest
reasons I have ever heard to not develop for the iPhone.

~~~
akadruid
Of course it's different. We sell and support (very expensive) software on
Linux and Windows. If our customers thought the Linux dev team could stop us
releasing updates, they'd be looking to migrate to more reliable platform
sooner rather than later.

------
clammer
If a paid for RSS reader violates their TOS, then wouldn't a paid for browser
(html reader) do the same?

If apple is such a leader in the open web, then why don't they try to defend
the open web in court instead of rolling over without a fight?

I'm hoping the real issue is just a matter of Pulse's marketing material.
Should they remove trademarks from their copy, perhaps the NYT would back off.

~~~
rbanffy
> wouldn't a paid for browser (html reader) do the same?

Remember Safari and IE are also paid for. Safari for Mac requires OSX and is,
presumably, included in its price. The same goes for Internet Explorer, whose
EULA explicitly forbids you from installing on anything other than Windows.
Safari for Windows may get away with that.

~~~
cwp
I'm a bit confused. You obviously know that Safari runs on Windows, but you
say it requires OS X. Huh?

~~~
rbanffy
Quoting myself:

"Safari for Mac requires OSX"

"Safari for Windows may get away with that"

~~~
cwp
Yeah, I did read that. You appear to be contradicting yourself. Care to
explain? What does Safari for Windows "get away with?"

~~~
rbanffy
It's not a commercial product. Safari for OSX, however, requires you to either
buy OSX or a Mac, driving Apple's revenue.

~~~
cwp
So you're saying that Safari for Mac is a commercial product, but Safari for
Windows isn't? Apple develops Safari because a platform without a free, high
quality web browser just isn't viable, but that doesn't make Safari
"commercial." I certainly don't buy the idea that Safari drives Mac sales.

But this is just nit-picking. I agree that the Times is being completely
ridiculous here. There are all sorts of commercial entities involved in people
reading the Times RSS feeds - Apple, Pulse, the users' ISP, the Times' hosting
company, various telcos in between the two, the folks who made the routers the
packets pass through, etc. The Times doesn't seem to have accepted that they
don't have direct contact with their readers online; they're just one part of
a larger ecosystem.

~~~
rbanffy
I agree it's a stretch demonstrating the absurdity of the NYT demand. Safari
for OSX is a commercial product because it comes bundled with OSX and there is
no other way to get a Safari to run on a Mac without buying OSX. In the case
of Safari 5, you have even would have to buy 10.5 or 10.6.

Safari for Windows is just an attempt to get Windows web developers to test
against Safari. No Windows user I know of uses Safari as the main browser.

~~~
cwp
Well, you could run Windows on your Mac, and run Safari for Windows.

~~~
rbanffy
But then you should never use IE's RSS reader.

------
mkramlich
if you couldn't see the fnords before, perhaps you can now

------
zandorg
At first glance, I thought 'pulse' meant it took your pulse. Not sure how
that'd work.

~~~
VMG
"just pop it on your wrist"

------
thunk
Bwahahahaha. "Lip my stocking!" [1] with NYT playing the part of the escort.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2dtAi5Za-s>

