Zite Being Sued by Publishers over Content Scraping
It seems as though Zite isnt as popular with publishers as first thought. A growing list of US publishers have sent cease-and-desist letters to Zite, including the Associated Press, Dow Jones, Gannett and Getty Images, for copyright and trademark violations.
Zite has been pulling stories from all these publishers without their approval. The key issue here for the publishers is that their content is being stripped and they arent seeing any of the financial rewards they would see if users were reading their web versions.
“By systematically reformatting, republishing, and redistributing our original content on a mass commercial scale without our permission in your iPad application, Zite directly and adversely impacts our businesses,” the letter says.
Zite has promised that they will change and comply with publishers requests, but I cant see this startup gaining any traction from here on out. Overall, its a shame!
