I Do Not Agree to Your Terms
First, I want everybody to know about the ridiculous stunt Apple is trying to pull here. I’d have been perfectly happy if they had just sent me an e-mail saying they were going to include my feed, and if I didn’t like it I could e-mail to opt out. I’d even be happy if they didn’t even give the option to opt out! After all, having an RSS feed in the first place is an implict opt-in to that sort of thing. But trying to dictate terms on top of that while telling me that I automatically agree to them unless I opt out is unacceptable, even if the terms themselves are relatively benign. They should stop doing this, and telling people about what they’re doing is the only way I know that might help to make that happen.
My guess is that this was just clumsy communication on Apple’s part. As Ash later says:
I wager the intent was a courtesy notification, but unfortunately they wrote it as a crazy EULA-like magic contract. I don’t think they are actually claiming anything they don’t already get under the law, but the way they word it is awful.
So the issue is not what Apple is actually doing but rather that someone approved such tone-deaf language. It’s the opposite of the human side that Apple just presented at WWDC.
