If you haven’t heard of the iPad-only app Zite, chances are you will soon. Billed as “a personalized magazine for your iPad,” the app is quickly gaining popularity with users of similar apps like Flipboard and Pulse -- as well as drawing the same kind of unwanted attention from content providers.
All Things Digital’s BoomTown is reporting that iPad app developer Zite, Inc. is already facing a mountain of legal hurt, receiving a cease and desist letter on Wednesday from “a panoply” of media giants, including The Washington Post, Associated Press, Gannett, Getty Images, Time and Dow Jones.
So what’s the problem? Like Flipboard and Pulse before them, the Zite app pulls content from RSS feeds (as well as Twitter tweets and follows), but rather than simply displaying the content in a magazine-style format, Zite actually gets smarter as you use it, pulling in new content based on what you like and retracting content that you don’t.
The free iPad-only app has quickly become a favorite for many users, particularly those previously in love with Flipboard and Pulse. But like those apps, the Zite developers have found themselves in a legal pickle with content publishers, who claim the app is violating copyright laws.
“The Zite application is plainly unlawful,” claimed the group cease and desist letter sent to Zite CEO Ali Davar, which noted a laundry list of supposed copyright violations.
The problem appears to stem from Zite’s ability to strip away unwanted elements -- such as the advertising these media giants count on to make a profit -- presenting articles in a clean, magazine-style format that’s clutter-free. But apparently that won’t be the case for much longer, as Zite CEO Davar told BoomTown that the company plans to shift content from these publishers to a web-only view to sidestep the legal issues.
“It’s a bummer that they did this, but we expected it,” Davar said. “Zite’s goal is to work with publishers, not to be antagonistic. The few publishers that have contacted us regarding the reading mode view we have complied with their requests and simply switched over to web view. We’re talking to publishers right now to find a win-win for them monetarily and to at the same time preserve the great user experience.”
If you haven’t checked out Zite yet, the free iPad app is ready and waiting for you in App Store -- for now.
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
starbase421
March 31, 2011 at 1:30pm
I love Zite. It's a fantastic "magazine browser." After reading this article, I realized that I never thought about the information it "stripped away" from the original sources so that it could create such a pleasant and easy reading experience.
I will not pretend to know or understand copyright law; it just seems to complicate itself with every emerging technology.
I realize that the original content source incurred an expense to write, setup, publish, and secure ads for a given article. It hopes to regain that expense via ads on its site.
Today I've learned that Zite pulls content from an original source and re-presents the content--without the work. So what? If I like a source that I discover through Zite, I'm more likely to engage that source directly when possible. (Of course, the reverse may be true as well.) Zite does cite every source it pulls from. Nothing is plagiarized.
Zite has created something amazing, and of course, people are going to be upset that they didn't do it first. Perhaps the original sources need to develop a better way to present or deliver information that will draw us to their site first. How information is deployed or presented shouldn't be copyrighted. Does it really matter to anyone that I view and article here or there? Is this all about money, or the ability to share information?
At what point does "content" (an article) morph into "information" (something everyone is writing about)? And when and how do the copyright laws apply to this "information" that I can find something about on 100+ sites?
