

Apple criticised over 'presumptuous' news app email - bjhowell
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33151325

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jws
Do not open the teapot. There is currently a tempest in there.

Apple can not legally bind you by sending you an email and using your public
RSS feed. Anyone doing business who does not understand this needs to learn
some law _right now_.†

At its most basic layer, Apple News appears to be an RSS reader which may
display ads. This is nothing new. If you don't want your content syndicated,
don't publish an RSS feed.

The edited synopsis of the email I have seen second hand on the web _does_
appear to be very badly conceived. The exact verbiage and a (presumably)
California lawyer would be required to tell exactly what it means.

It is possible they are offering to exchange timely notification of legal
action toward your articles in exchange for you indemnifying them. That would
make me uneasy, my content is all my own (I think), but I'm not going to be
expanding my legal footprint without some concrete compensation.

␄

† 7 years of fancy CS/EE education and I can say from building and running a
software/hardware business for 20 years that the _most_ valuable single course
I took was the Business Law class that was required and I then thought was a
stupid waste of my time.

~~~
x5n1
I was making fun of this yesterday, but I don't know wtf they were thinking by
sending out an e-mail like that. Their lawyers must have looked at it. There
must be something more to it then a mail out of the blue. It's possible you
agreed to something earlier than allows them to make stupid demands like
these.

