“Apple is facing criticism over an email sent out to bloggers that assumes acceptance of terms and conditions,” Sean Keach reports for TrustedReviews.
“The company has informed a number of bloggers that it intends to include their sites’ content in its recently announced News app, with the email in question reeling off a number of terms that will apply to those involved,” Keach reports. “The controversy has been sparked because Apple applies the terms and conditions as part of an opt-out process. This means that unless you explicitly say you don’t want to be part of the News app, it will be assumed that you accept all of the terms outlined in the email.”
“Unfortunately, this means that if a blogger misses the email, they could unwittingly be accepted into a programme that they otherwise may have declined,” Keach reports. “While this might sound sinister, appropriating RSS Feeds for news aggregators is standard industry practice. It’s also a common-sense move; attempting to manually sign up innumerable bloggers to the News app would be a long and painstaking process.
Read more in the full article here.
“The BBC has spoken to three online publishers about the move,” Kevin Rawlinson reports for The Beeb. “One of them, Mike Ash said he thought it was ‘wrong of Apple’ to presume that he would indemnify them. He said the email was ‘presumptuous.’ And, in a blogpost entitled I Do Not Agree To Your Terms, he took issue with the requirement to opt out.”
Let me get this straight, Apple: you send me an email outlining the terms under which you will redistribute my content, and you will just assume that I agree to your terms unless I opt out? You’re going to consider me bound to terms you just declared to me in an email as long as I don’t respond? That’s completely crazy. You don’t even know if I received the email! — Mike Ash
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As Americans, we hit our limit on self-righteous indignation approximately two decades ago, at least, thanks.
Here’s a hint for bloggers: If you don’t want anyone to use your RSS feeds, don’t publish RSS feeds.