Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

'Pulse News Reader' for iPad Pulled From App Store After New York Times Complaint

VirtualRain

VirtualRain

macrumors 603
Original poster
Aug 1, 2008
6,304
118
Vancouver, BC
Bizarre! Is the NYTimes concerned about the promotion of the product showing the NYTimes, or the actual concept of the news reader itself? If the latter, does this impact all sales of RSS feed readers?

Under pressure from the New York Times the simply fabulous Pulse RSS app has been removed from sale at the iTunes App Store.

Apple took this step because New York Times and Boston’s lawyers emailed Apple and told them Pulse was infringing on their rights.

Apparently the $3.99 cost of the app meant the newspaper saw this use as “commercial” and forbade it. (eMail correspondence below).

NB: Lawrence Lessig would probably launch into a conversation here as to how copyright law, so badly used, has the effect of stifling human creativity.

In a sick-making moment of irony, the New York Times was one of the first sites to praise Pulse, praising it as a great news reading app developed by two college students.
Click to expand...

Link
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/06/08/pulse-news-reader-for-ipad-pulled-from-app-store-after-new-york-times-complaint/
I was able to DL b4 getting yanked. So I was lucky. I'm sure it will be back soon.

.
 
'Pulse News Reader' for iPad Pulled From App Store After New York Times Complaint




143505-pulse_news_reader.jpg


All Things Digital reports that just hours after being mentioned as a prominent example of the promise of App Store applications for the iPad early in Apple CEO Steve Jobs' keynote address at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference, Pulse News Reader disappeared from the App Store. According to the report, the removal was the result of a copyright complaint filed by The New York Times over the application's use of RSS feeds, which are used in a "visual mosaic" format to display news content to users.
But by the afternoon, that flush of entrepreneurial success had turned sour, after Apple (AAPL) informed the two that Pulse was being pulled from the App Store after it received a written notice from the New York Times Company (NYT) declaring that "The New York Times Company believes your application named 'Pulse News Reader' infringes The New York Times Company's rights."
Click to expand...
The report also notes with some amusement that The New York Times just last week published a feature profile on the application and its developers.

The application's developers, a pair of Stanford University graduate students, are planning to contact Apple today to determine exactly what is going on and whether they can simply remove New York Times content from the application.

Richard Samson, lawyer for The New York Times, argues in his complaint to Apple that the application's paid nature results in unlicensed usage of the newspaper's content, a violation of the Terms of Use. In addition, Samson complains about the application "framing" Times content in violation of the Terms of Use and objects to the featuring of Times content, which comes preloaded in the application, in App Store screenshots.

Article Link: 'Pulse News Reader' for iPad Pulled From App Store After New York Times Complaint
 
OMG it's all Apple's fault! (that's what the clueless haters would say)

Anyway, it'll probably be allowed again after some minor changes in response to New York Times.
 
This is actually very important. I really hope Pulse wins this.

The point of RSS feeds is to allow them to be subscribed to in newsreaders. If NYT wants to claim that it requires licensing to subscribe to RSS feeds...that could set a bad precedent.
 
Hmm doesn't google aggregate news along with a million other websites, what's the difference.
 
ShiftyPig said:
And you think that letting a third party profit from NYT's articles is going to help newspapers?
Click to expand...

If NYT thinks this is a problem, they shouldn't have an RSS feed. This is how RSS works.

If they want to stop this, then they should take down their RSS feed. If not, the fact that they have an RSS feed is acknowledgement that they believe the profits made from users being directed to their site through RSS outweighs the loss of people reading the news through RSS.
 
GFLPraxis said:
This is actually very important. I really hope Pulse wins this.

The point of RSS feeds is to allow them to be subscribed to in newsreaders. If NYT wants to claim that it requires licensing to subscribe to RSS feeds...that could set a bad precedent.
Click to expand...

Exactly. I think it's a bogus claim too. You don't need a license to display public information. You don't need a license to view a web page, nor do you need one to view an RSS page.

These clueless lawyers pouring salt into the newspaper's wounds if you ask me. But hey, this too could be an "unauthorized" legal junior who's "having a bad day". Meh.
 
topmounter said:
How many newspapers would love to have their >public< RSS feed be a default feed in a popular RSS reader on a popular device?
Click to expand...

But it's NOT their public RSS feed.

The 're-framing' part of the complaint really changes the whole thing. The NY Times right.

If Pulse goes back to just displying the feed, then that would be ok (I'd hope).

fishmoose said:
Yes, because that makes people more likely to go to there website where they make money of ads.
Click to expand...

No they won't. The app lets you post the info right to your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Why would you waste time to go back to the NYT's website?
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

It's a new world guys. Catch up.
 
Small White Car said:
No they won't. The app lets you post the info right to your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Why would you waste time to go back to teh NYT's website?
Click to expand...

If you like the info then maybe you'll consider going to the site via your browser to check out what else they got.
 
I noticed this too, because i did a search for it after reading the praise in this forum. Didn't get it in time, but oh well plenty more to read on my iPad! :cool:
 
GFLPraxis said:
If NYT thinks this is a problem, they shouldn't have an RSS feed. This is how RSS works.

If they want to stop this, then they should take down their RSS feed. If not, the fact that they have an RSS feed is acknowledgement that they believe the profits made from users being directed to their site through RSS outweighs the loss of people reading the news through RSS.
Click to expand...

Just because the RSS feed is free doesn't mean that it isn't copyrighted material. NYT is well within its rights to stop someone from profiting off it.

If I made an app that replicated this forum and sold it for 99¢, you can bet the mods/admins would want to have a word with me.
 
Well this is one of my favorite iPad apps and one of the very first things I open when I grab my iPad.... this sucks
 
And why does Apple behave like a court? If Pulse is breaching the copyright law then NY should warn them not Apple. If Pulse doesn't listen to NY's warning then NY should go to court not to Apple.

Obviously we know why Apple took of the application . They don't want to get sued by NY. What a awkward system!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back