
Cease-and-Desist Against iPad News Aggregator Zite - zoowar
http://mashable.com/2011/04/01/zite-cease-and-desist/
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MatthewPhillips
Makes sense. There's a thin line between providing a better reading experience
and redistributing someone else's work. Readability/Read it Later/Instapaper
can survive because their service is user-driven.

Zite's going to have to concentrate on their recommendation engine (which is
excellent) and forget about the presentation layer. Writers have the right to
choose how their work is presented. It's not worth it for Zite to try and
fight this.

That leaves Flipboard in an awkward position though; their business is _all_
about presentation. Partnerships are a way around it, but I just don't see
that being all that profitable.

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Entaroadun
Yeah, Zite is my favorite app on the ipad. I wish they made it for the desktop
and iphone. The one thing they can improve upon in their rec. engine is
removing dupe articles. It'll definitely be interesting to see if Zite can
find a good way around this.

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jrockway
How is this any different than Instapaper or a browser with AdBlock? What
_law_ is being violated?

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mikeryan
I can't tell if the question is asked in earnest but copyright is the law
being violated. Instapaper likely has the same issues, but at least the page
is actually viewed once to save the article so the content owners may not care
as much.

This is going to be a ongoing issue and, frankly, the content owners have a
very valid point.

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jrockway
Copyright has fair-use provisions. I don't see how using a service to reformat
content and remove ads is any different than using a DVR to record TV and
fast-forward through commercials, or to use the feature of your TV that
converts 4:3 content to something that fills the 16:9 screen. It may not be
what the people holding the copyright on that content want, but our society
has decided that's Too Fucking Bad.

An application that downloads articles and removes the ads is like a DVR for
web content.

And, honestly, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to allow outsourcing
of the DVR-ing. I can pay someone to clean my house; why can't I pay someone
to record TV and then send me the video files?

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null_ptr
_analyzes users’ everyday reading habits — what stories are bypassed, what
stories are clicked on, and how long they’re read for — to give users a
magazine smartly tailored to their interests._

So, say goodbye to stumbling on anything new out of your tailored sphere of
interests.

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eli
Previous discussion from when this story was posted a month ago:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2389622>

