I Do Not Agree to Your Terms

https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/i-do-not-agree-to-your-terms.html

by ingve • 11 years ago

396 99 11 years ago

Nadya2• 11 years ago

I have no idea if you'll ever see this declaration, but that's just like yours, so I think it's fair.

The one caveat to this is that he is responding to their email, showing that he has seen and read it.

IANAL - but because he provides an RSS Feed, Apple can already use it. The terms that they put forward are things they already can do with access to the RSS Feed. They are allowing creators to opt out. I don't see how Apple is in the wrong here. While the terms may seem like they are trying to take something.

If we receive a legal claim about your RSS content, we will tell you so that you can resolve the issue, including indemnifying Apple if Apple is included in the claim.

This is covering Apple's ass in case your content receives a legal claim and Apple is included for providing access to your content. This essentially is "you agree to not shoot the messenger".

You will be responsible for any payments that might be due to any contributors or other third parties for the creation and use of your RSS content.

If you have a featured post or pay someone to post content for you - Apple is not responsible paying for them. This is, again, just covering their own asses.

You agree to let us use, display, store, and reproduce the content in your RSS feeds including placing advertising next to or near your content without compensation to you. Don’t worry, we will not put advertising inside your content without your permission.

They can do this anyway without your permission. The email is providing you a way to opt-out of this.

You can remove your RSS feed whenever you want by opting out or changing your settings in News Publisher.

If you wish to remove your RSS feed from News they're letting you know how.

markbnj• 11 years ago

IANAL but I can't see how not replying to their email could possibly bind the publisher to anything. In effect Apple is using the content absent any agreement, and simply trusting that most people will be thrilled and agree out of hand.

Nadya2• 11 years ago

The legal system is a bit flawed in this regard. Biased towards "strongarmers" with deep enough pockets to hold a lawsuit.

While I don't think the email is legally binding unless "signed" (responded to in an affirmative manner) - they could still use it to take you to court regardless over it. Many people would lack the funds needed to defend themselves so wouldn't bother trying to defend and are therefore forced into acceptance. Unless you can find a pro-gratis lawyer or a "no win, no fees" to take the case.

The extra terms are mostly to cover Apple's ass in case your content is illegal. If you get sued for your content for whatever weird, legal reason that might happen and Apple gets listed for providing access to your content through News (would that even happen?) and the case gets through and somehow Apple isn't excluded from the case (even if listed, I don't see how they would be found liable) you agree to pay for them.

Which is definitely something you don't want to do. The likelihood is small/impossibly rare or maybe even impossible. But Apple's Lawyers want to cover Apple's ass "just in case".

Outside of a few restrictive licenses - they can already display content next to ads without your permission. Mikeash would either need to properly license their blog or decline rights to Apple.

By writing his blog he has identified that he has read the e-mail. Although I don't think it's legally binding at that point (regardless if it says he agrees to it unless he opts-out), IANAL. If a lawsuit ever occurs over the use of his content and Apple is involved - attempting to prove he has read their e-mail to try and enforce the terms would mean they have read his blog to know he has read the e-mail, which means they have seen his denial of their terms. A catch-22.

benmanns• 11 years ago

But, of course, the lawyers have to get involved.

The nonsense that follows would suggest that the lawyers were not involved.

seivan• 11 years ago

I thought it would be reasonable to assume to whatever nonsense that followed was in fact caused by lawyers.

I am however not saying that is the case, I am just saying the assumption is reasonable given... lawyers... reputation.

rosser• 11 years ago

Some lawyers. I know more than a few lawyers who aren't — or at least don't continually make the choice to profit off this kind of — clownshoes bullshit.

DannyBee2• 11 years ago

The part later was clearly either not run through legal, or more likely, legal gave them one answer, News didn't like it, News won.

nothrabannosir• 11 years ago

I don't like the idea of showing ads next to my content in this situation, but I'm pretty sure I have no right to control that.

You have every right in the world to control that. It's called copyright. If you choose a license for your content that prohibits putting ads next to it, then there you go: you used your right to control that.

Not saying it's practical, or business wise, or good PR, or, ... But definitely your right.

TillE• 11 years ago

The default "license" with copyright is basically "all rights reserved". Whenever you start copying or distributing someone else's material without permission, you'd better be pretty confident in a fair use exemption or some other legal argument.

ikeboy3• 11 years ago

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_v._Google,_Inc.) might apply here.

huuu• 11 years ago

  if(User-Agent == "Apple") {
    showNonsenseNewsFeed();
  } else {
    showNewsFeed();
  }

But serious: wouldn't it be enough to place a use policy or terms of use on mikeash.com restricting the use of the feed for commercial reasons?

mikeash6• 11 years ago

It would be enough to just reply "NO" to their e-mail. The problem isn't getting out of their system, but just how they're trying to do business at all here.

marbletiles• 11 years ago

Does the RSS spec even include the ability to include machine-readable terms/licencing in a feed? Given its source (and the gentler world in which it and Atom were born) I'm guessing not, but it seems like a big omission.

bduerst• 11 years ago

Not machine readable. There is a rights/copyright standard field, which doesn't influence behavior in an automated way.

HelloMcFly2• 11 years ago

Honest question here: if you're pushing your content out via an RSS feed, does every RSS aggregator have to get permission to use it in their aggregation? How does that work with the thousands of other RSS aggregators?

dsr_• 11 years ago

That's not how an RSS feed works.

An RSS feed is not a push. It's exactly the same as any other web page: you must pull on it to get the new content.

Sure, from the point of view of a user of an aggregator, the aggregator went out and did the work automatically. Whether it is pull or push is not obvious. But the fact remains, it is all pull.

HelloMcFly2• 11 years ago

An RSS feed is not a push. It's exactly the same as any other web page: you must pull on it to get the new content.

Fair enough, though I think the semantic distinction doesn't really address where I'm confused. My two main questions being 1) does every aggregator need a site's permission to use their RSS feed, and 2) why else would you publish an RSS feed if not to make your content accessible across other platforms / sources?

An RSS feed is a pull, sure, but it seems like one is pulling content that the creator has put a "pull here" sign on.

jimwalsh• 11 years ago

I feel that by enabling/creating an RSS feed for your content you are implicitly allowing people to use the content in the RSS feed as they see fit. You may put a license of some type on it, for various free use type licenses or whatever, but you get the point. If there isn't a license on the site or in the feed stating how the content can be used, people are going to assume they can aggregate it how they see fit.

I wrote quite a large news aggregator in the past it indexed over 200 sites every 5-10 minutes. Intially when we were doing the research for the RSS/Atom feeds, we were contacting producers of the content explaining what we were doing to see if they wanted in.

We were getting such overwhelmingly positive response from the creators that they were happy that people were actually using the RSS feeds and were interested spreading the content around that we never had anyone request to be removed or didnt ask specifically to get into the aggregator. In fact the only maintenance was when a site died or they changed their feed URL.

detaro2• 11 years ago

Depends on the aggregator.

I'd guess personal feed reader applications are relatively clearly covered, because when you offer a feed for your users to read it is implied that they are going to use an application of some kind to read it.

Websites that just publicly reproduce all contents of an RSS feed very likely aren't (and have lost the resulting law suits, at least here in Germany)

brillenfux5• 11 years ago

It's funny how they don't even give a damn about your copyright. If you did this with Apples content you would get shit left and right, but since it's Apple doing it to you this time they can just assume your consent by implication.

Glorious!

The state of copyright. Right, Fucking, There!

zokier• 11 years ago

Do you think every RSS reader is infringing copyright by displaying other peoples content, or is Apple somehow a special case here?

brillenfux5• 11 years ago

You do understand that the Apple News app is a content aggregation service and not a feed reader, right?

Apple is providing a service with your content. A feed reader is usually controlled by the individual reading the feeds. The programs themselves usually don't aggregate or redact in any way — or enrich it with advertisement.

And if they do they are just as bad. However the email is a gem in itself.

oneeyedpigeon• 11 years ago

I wonder what Apple would do if we all sent them an email saying we'll republish their content alongside our own advertising unless they send us a personal letter requesting otherwise. Presumably, they'd play ball - same rules for all, right?

brillenfux5• 11 years ago

Absolutely! I would just go ahead. Good Luck :)

Tloewald2• 11 years ago

When you search for, say, Apple developer information in Google, Google sticks ads in the results next to links to Apple's content. Does it pay Apple?

brillenfux5• 11 years ago

Are you really relativizing the fact that Apple is aɡgregating full RSS content and has the confidence to send unsolicited email to contrive implied consent to the point of comparing it with Google putting ads next to small snippets of search results Apple consented to (albeit also just implied)?

cjensen3• 11 years ago

I'm not seeing a problem here. There is tons of precedent for taking a RSS feed and displaying advertising next to it. Google Reader did it. NetNewsWire did it.

Having an RSS feed implies that you are okay with someone copying what is found in the feed and displaying it to users. Since there is no technical mechanism defined to flag allowable uses, there is presently no way for an RSS author to signal intent or add conditions like "may not be commingled with advertising."

It seems to me that Apple is just providing a heads up to the RSS author what is going to happen, and giving them the chance to opt-out ahead of time. Apple could have done this without asking.

The only weirdness is making it seem like the RSS author has accepted terms unless they respond. That was a poor choice. They should have said "this is how we will run things; to stop us from using your RSS feed, click this link."

brillenfux5• 11 years ago

Putting out a RSS feed does by no means imply consent to third-party use. The same way like putting out pictures doesn't mean everybody can use them. Christ!

cjensen3• 11 years ago

There are at least a dozen third-party Feed Aggregators who disagree and feel that consent is given. Why is this only an issue now?

payne92• 11 years ago

The indemnification provision is a big problem. It's basically saying that if someone sues Apple, you are obligated to defend Apple.

cjensen3• 11 years ago

Pretty sure that actually says "if someone makes a claim against your feed, we'll let you know. If you say the claim is bs and indemnify us, we'll keep republishing."

That can be inferred by the fact that indemnification is a subclause of "you can resolve the issue." In other words, it would be only occur as a result of the RSS author's active and intentional actions in responding to a claim. Again, stupid wording though.

Animats• 11 years ago

Putting that in an unsolicited email is insane. If someone has an actual copy of that email, with headers, please post it somewhere. Send a copy to the EFF. Send copies to law professors.

skybrian• 11 years ago

I don't remember any ads in Google Reader. This question suggests there weren't any:

http://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-Google-put-ads-in-Google-Read...

dhimes• 11 years ago

Brilliant response. They send him a letter declaring a legal contract on his rss feed unless he specifically declines, he declines via rss feed- which the lawyers will probably not read.

I wish I was this clever.

mikeash6• 11 years ago

This makes me think of Fight Club:

Tyler Durden: Oh I get it, it's very clever.

Narrator: Thank you.

Tyler Durden: How's that working out for you?

Narrator: What?

Tyler Durden: Being clever.

Narrator: Great.

Tyler Durden: Keep it up then... Right up.

Anyway, glad you like it.

granos• 11 years ago

You can't agree to a contract by inaction.

I suspect that whether Apple violates his copyright would come down to exactly how they implemented the system. If they pulled posts directly from his servers they would probably be ok. If they cache/host the content themselves it could get a bit murkier.

ikeboy3• 11 years ago

If they cache/host the content themselves it could get a bit murkier.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_v._Google,_Inc.)

AnimalMuppet• 11 years ago

Disclaimer: IANAL.

But I seem to recall there was something like this with book clubs, that they'd send you a piece of mail, and you had to reply to opt out. Otherwise they would start sending you books, and charging you for them.

That kind of garbage became illegal in the 1970s or thereabouts. I can't imagine that doing it via e-mail makes it any more legal.

The only leg that Apple has to stand on is that it's going to be really difficult (expensive) to sue them. I'm pretty sure that the actual law is not on their side here.

wkdown• 11 years ago

Are you referring also to Columbia House and BMG in the 90s? Sign up, get seven CDs for a buck, then you forget to cancel and they send you "A Barry Manilow and Kenny G Christmas" for $18 plus S&H.

This still happens online with an X-day trial of something, fine print says to cancel or be charged $XX.XX/mo. Good luck figuring out how to cancel, though.

fapjacks• 11 years ago

Yes, this is what I remember my parents getting really mad about as a teenager. This was one of the first times in my life I thought to myself "People do this kind of thing to other people? WTF humans."

thesteamboat• 11 years ago

The key phrase here is sign up. I can't just send you an unsolicited text message subscribing you to Cat Facts (only $29.99/month!) unless you follow my intricate opt-out scheme.

declan• 11 years ago

It would be one thing if all Apple did was send publishers email saying: "We love your writing. We plan to include your RSS feed in Apple News unless you opt-out (here's how to do it). We will respect your copyright and will only display fair use excerpts."

But Apple didn't do that. Instead their email includes language about "indemnifying Apple" from legal liability. It also includes open-ended language about "placing advertising next to or near your content...without compensation to you" in a way that might ordinarily require a license. I wonder if this language would be viewed as legally binding if Apple can demonstrate that the recipient, say, logged into News Publisher to check their settings but chose not to opt out.

On the other hand, as a practical matter, I suspect bloggers will not be lining up to sue Apple in federal court...

[By way of disclosure, I'm a founder of https://recent.io/, which is in the same space as Apple News. We plan to submit our iOS version for Apple's TestFlight beta testing program this week. Fingers crossed!]

lisper• 11 years ago

I suspect bloggers will not be lining up to sue Apple in federal court...

Why not? It should be lucrative. If Apple publishes my content without a license that's a clear copyright violation. I should be able to collect up to $250,000 per incident.

wwweston• 11 years ago

As the author states, though, having an RSS feed is arguably an implicit license for what's in it. There are arguments against that too, I suppose, but they have a lot in common with the idea that accessing a hyperlink without permission is a violation.

Apple's on good neighbor ground (and probably good legal ground) acting as an RSS aggregator while giving people a chance to opt out.

They're on neighbor-from-hell ground in handing third parties some weird auto-invoking license for using that party's content. This is the kind of behavior I expect from teenage fan posting a song from a band they like on YouTube, except the teenager is likely to recognize they don't hold any rights and aren't in any position to dictate a license before posting it.

eli4• 11 years ago

Presumably Apple has the same rights and abilities to consume and display RSS feeds (and to make money off them) as the author of any paid or ad-supported feed reader.

I agree the part about indemnifying Apple is a silly overreach, but this seems like a bit of an overreaction.

tux1968• 11 years ago

Here's what I don't understand. The music industry broadcasts its product over the airwaves, but if you dare copy and retransmit that with or without adding ads of your own, you're in for a world of hurt. So what is the difference being a blog-caster? Why exactly can't you dictate the terms of consumption every bit as much as the music industry?

yaur• 11 years ago

The irony here is that they don't need to as publishers could get opted in to a class action suit.

rspeer2• 11 years ago

In all the WWDC hype I didn't actually hear about Apple News.

This is interesting. Is Apple going to actually revive RSS as a tool for reaching the masses? (As opposed to a few persistent geeks, of which I'm one but I can tell there aren't that many overall?)

Bullshit legalese aside, that sounds like a great thing.

ErikAugust4• 11 years ago

Placing ads next to people's content while not compensating them is a great thing?

rspeer2• 11 years ago

RSS/Atom is a useful technology with no adequate replacement, and I have no patience for your copyright maximalism.

ErikAugust4• 11 years ago

Let me get this straight:

Apple comes out with an Ad Blocker for Safari. Then it comes out with Apple News, which places ads next to RSS content, and doesn't compensate the author?

Come on, man. That is infinitely upsetting.

eli4• 11 years ago

Do you expect feed reader companies to compensate the authors of the feeds they aggregate too?

kaolinite3• 11 years ago

If you enable adverts next to your content, you get a cut of the profits (presumably 70%). By default, there are no adverts.

(Updated the comment to remove uncertainty now that I have a citation: https://developer.apple.com/news-publisher/)

ErikAugust4• 11 years ago

Struggling to see where that is mentioned anywhere in the article.

LeoPanthera• 11 years ago

Apple comes out with an Ad Blocker for Safari.

No, they didn't. They came out with an extension API for Safari that allows extensions which block ads, amongst other things.

serve_yay• 11 years ago

Jeez, I mean, you don't have to love Apple, but it probably wouldn't kill you to be honest about what they are actually doing.

DannyBee2• 11 years ago

Generally, this kind of agreement has to be signed and in writing :) So this is not going to go well for Apple. I suspect they know this though.

notahacker3• 11 years ago

Look at it from the company lawyers' perspective. They've watched Google have all sorts of legal trouble with companies that objected to Googlebot picking up their news content despite the fact they could have opted out by modifying their robots file (if they didn't want to have their cake and eat it by receiving traffic from Google indexing their headlines whilst suing Google for having the temerity to index their headlines...) So even though Apple are going after a market where a presumption of "right to excerpt" is even less of a grey area since RSS's raison d'être is to allow third parties to syndicate site-owner controlled excerpts of content, they're still covering their ass by publicising their intent and giving feed owners an easy avenue to opt out. Additionally they point out they might slap banner ads on the aggregation service, and you might want to sort out any copyright/legal issues in advance because they're not accepting any responsibility for it other than passing the message on. Apple aren't doing anything any other aggregations service doesn't do without publicising any opt-out process they have, and they're not imposing any burden on the author they don't already face.

Sure, the tone could use a little work, as could everything written as a legal document ever, but they appear to have managed to do cover their ass in an email which (unlike standard EULAs, especially Apple's) is actually short enough to be readable. I'm not really sure this is one for HN to be up in arms about.

I have more issue with the companies that provide RSS feeds whilst simultaneously displaying terms and conditions prohibiting creating hyperlinks to their website without written permission, which is the sort of weird illogic of the legal departments of traditional publishers this dubiously-drafted message is really aimed at.

ScottWhigham2• 11 years ago

I'm not really sure this is one for HN to be up in arms about.

FTA: "If we receive a legal claim about your RSS content, we will tell you so that you can resolve the issue, including indemnifying Apple if Apple is included in the claim."

I guess I don't understand why you do not take issue with this line. Apple has "enrolled" him in an indemnification clause without his consent or request.

abakker• 11 years ago

Isn't this standard though? If I link to a website's RSS feed because it is interesting, and that website then posts something illegal, wouldn't my site be indemnified?

Isn't this just like saying "the views expressed here aren't endorsed by our corporation, so don't hold us responsible for the content, only the mechanism by which it is provided" ?

notahacker3• 11 years ago

There's a clause which mentions that if they receive a legal claim based on your content they'll send you another email asking you to indemnify them, which you may or may not choose to reply to in the unlikely event of it actually happening (presumably this time, since it's more serious, it'll be opt in, and exactly like DMCA requests they'll take the content off their digital property if you don't explicitly agree to indemnify them and assert your right to publish the content)

Again, I don't see any issue to take with the wording acknowledging the existence of a process whereby their lawyers might send me an email in the event of future complaints. There is no indemnification clause unless and until you receive that email and respond by agreeing to indemnify Apple.

ChuckMcM• 11 years ago

The terms, as stated, are ridiculous. If you write an article that gets picked up for the NY Times, they pay you for it. If you write an article for a magazine, they pay you for it. Once they do, and you've granted them a partial copyright (in this case most likely second serial rights) then every time they pull an article to include in their "news" they should pay the author.

The much better way to do this would be, "We'd like to include your RSS feed in our News application, if anyone reads an article that you have provided to us we will make a one time payment to you of $X (say $250), in exchange for that payment you give us the right, in perpetuity, to continue to provide access to that article though our News application."

Basically if you're writing is bringing people to the News application they should pay for that. And once they have, they can monetize there end of it just like newspapers and magazines by putting ads on the site or adding other junk.

It sounds like they are trying to construct some novel theory[1] where if someone managed to find your blog and read it they wouldn't have paid for it, so Apple doesn't need to pay for it if they are using it to attract people to their app.

So lets look at it from an information economics perspective, the author's article derives its value from the author's artistic expression. Nobody else is going to write it just like they did, or how they did. The author "spends" that value to attract readers to the blog, and readers "pay" for that value by by exposed to advertisers who have paid the author to be on their page. So you get that?

The reader "buys" their content by agreeing to be exposed to advertising.

The author "sells" their content by providing access to their readers to advertisers.

The advertiser "buys" access to the content by paying the author when a reader interacts with the ad.

Apple is trying to step in, get the content for free, bring readers to their News App and then sell access to their readers to the Advertisers. You can see that without the Author's content there is no "value" to readers in the news app. Authors who agree to this are simply dropping money into Apple's lap.

[1] It isn't really novel people try to rip off artists by offering them 'exposure' all the time.

glenra• 11 years ago

I'm sensing poor reading skills. This seems to be the offending bit:

"If we receive a legal claim about your RSS content, we will tell you so that you can resolve the issue, including indemnifying Apple if Apple is included in the claim."

That does not ACTUALLY SAY "you agree to indemnify Apple." It's a conditional with a lot of preconditions but even if they were all met it obviously doesn't constitute a legal requirement. It's saying "if it happens to come up that somebody sues us, we'll help you resolve the issue, which may involve us AT THAT TIME asking you to indemnify Apple as part of some sort of agreement we haven't yet put forward."

It's a heads-up. At some point in the future IF legal exposure becomes a problem they expect that they will have a policy about it which would involve the publishers deliberately and explicitly agreeing to an ACTUAL CONTRACT in which both sides get some tangible benefit. This email is not that contract.

mikeash6• 11 years ago

The entire thing is offending. They sent me a bunch of terms which I'm expected to implicitly "agree" to unless I explicitly opt out. As I say in the title, I do not agree to the terms.

Maybe they don't need me to agree in the first place. But the fact that they're trying to get me to agree in this fashion is idiotic. The content of the supposed agreement is almost irrelevant.

monochromatic• 11 years ago

It's a poorly constructed sentence, but nothing about it reads (to me) as "Apple will help you resolve the issue."

mcv• 11 years ago

I really doubt that mail from Apple is in any way legally binding, but just in case it is, send them a mail (preferably at a different email address) stating that unless they reply with "NO", they agree to pay you $10,000 per month for including your feed in their news.

x5n12• 11 years ago

Hear back from their lawyer accusing you of extortion.

tadfisher• 11 years ago

That's not what extortion is.

an_account_name• 11 years ago

No meeting of the minds, no contract. Unless you take some positive action to confirm your acceptance of Apple's terms, there's no contract.

(I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice).

tempodox• 11 years ago

This is evil strong-arm practise. Apple is obviously counting on the odds of publishers not being able to sue them over this patent abuse. All you could achieve is probably some form of cease & desist, but no damage payments (IANAL).

Is Apple losing it? I can't imagine them performing a stupid fuck-up like this five years ago. This botch job just makes them look like evil bullies to everyone involved.

timtas• 11 years ago

This is fun. I mean it's fun to ponder the legalities. Let's try to be explicit about what has happened here:

1. Publisher implicitly offers Syndicator a license to republish his content.

2. Syndicator accepts the implicit license agreement by republishing the content.

3. Syndicator attempts to amend the implicit agreement by transmitting proposed amended terms over an unreliable channel and gain implicit acceptance by silence.

4. Publisher counters with an explicit refusal of the terms over another (more) unreliable channel not only refusing the amended terms but also rejecting the prescribed means of refusing them.

Let's say something blows up, and this ends up in court. How would it come down???

It seems obvious the terms were never agreed if either:

1. Syndicator fails to prove that Blogger ever read the email, or

2. Publisher can prove that Syndicator read his published response and yet continued to take his feed.

Obviously, the first condition is not met because Publisher said so. We can only speculate on the second. Making it to page one of Hacker News and Hacker Newsletter certainly helps Publisher argue that the second condition is met.

But what if neither condition is met? Can a syndicator lob terms over a publisher's fence and, even they are proven to be read, consider silence to constitute agreement?

I'm not a lawyer, and I have no idea how it would go. I'd guess there's some obscure case law from the '50s or something that would make or break this case.

anon_adderlan• 11 years ago

Alright, let's break it down.

You agree to let us use, display, store, and reproduce the content in your RSS feeds including placing advertising next to or near your content without compensation to you. Don’t worry, we will not put advertising inside your content without your permission.

Other RSS readers display ads near your content, and Google caches RSS feeds. So unless these are unusual use cases, Apple does not need your consent here, as it's implied by creating an RSS feed.

You confirm that you have all necessary rights to publish your RSS content, and allow Apple to use it for News as we set forth here. You will be responsible for any payments that might be due to any contributors or other third parties for the creation and use of your RSS content.
If we receive a legal claim about your RSS content, we will tell you so that you can resolve the issue, including indemnifying Apple if Apple is included in the claim.

Apple is saying they're not responsible for any copyright issues involving your RSS feed. This is also reasonable and already assumed to be the case, so they don't need your consent here either.

Now the contentious bits.

You can remove your RSS feed whenever you want by opting out or changing your settings in News Publisher.
If you do not want Apple to include your RSS feeds in News, reply NO to this email and we will remove your RSS feeds.

These are just (poorly worded, thanks lawyers) opt out options. There's nothing in this 'contract' which requires your consent or legally binds you in any way beyond what the law already does. Apple is simply offering two methods of opting out, and if anything is giving you MORE control over your feed than other RSS readers do. That is, unless you feel that every RSS reader must get permission from each RSS feed they want to cache and render.

I've dealt with a lot of technology contracts as of late, and this is a storm in a teacup. If you want to go after something that's genuinely harmful, then start with those 'arbitration' clauses that are in damn near every electronics and service contract today.

I Do Not Agree to Your Terms

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