Readability scrapes content and removes ads. Publishers lose revenue when Readability processes their content in that manner and presents it to the Readability subscriber.
Readability then tells the publisher "we're charging our subscribers in order to remove the ads from your site, if you want 70% of that revenue, sign up here, the alternative is, you get 0% and you also lose the revenue from your ads because we're going to scrape your content anyway".
Publishers can now either agree to Readability's redefining the publisher's business model, or they can fight back by using resources to subvert Readability from scraping the content.
Readability's business model is very similar to such P2P companies as Limewire: charging people for an easy method of accessing content that belongs to others. The only difference is, Readability has offered, apparently out of the kindness of their hearts, to pay a portion of their revenue to the publishers they steal content from. The publisher has no choice to be uninvolved in Readability's business model, they either accept it and get a percentage of it in lieu of their existing revenue, or Readability justs cuts the publishers existing revenue.
That's nearly the textbook definition of extortion.
Regarding Apple, you're absolutely wrong. No one is forced to develop an iOS app, so automatically, extortion is off the table. Further, the 30% does only apply to in-app subscribers, and though you want to claim that means everyone has therefore had their choice removed and must subscribe in-app, that's simply false. In addition, if most of your subscribers come from in-app purchases, you can thank Apple for setting up and maintaining an eco-system that is in turn your largest market.
Readability then tells the publisher "we're charging our subscribers in order to remove the ads from your site, if you want 70% of that revenue, sign up here, the alternative is, you get 0% and you also lose the revenue from your ads because we're going to scrape your content anyway".
Publishers can now either agree to Readability's redefining the publisher's business model, or they can fight back by using resources to subvert Readability from scraping the content.
Readability's business model is very similar to such P2P companies as Limewire: charging people for an easy method of accessing content that belongs to others. The only difference is, Readability has offered, apparently out of the kindness of their hearts, to pay a portion of their revenue to the publishers they steal content from. The publisher has no choice to be uninvolved in Readability's business model, they either accept it and get a percentage of it in lieu of their existing revenue, or Readability justs cuts the publishers existing revenue.
That's nearly the textbook definition of extortion.
Regarding Apple, you're absolutely wrong. No one is forced to develop an iOS app, so automatically, extortion is off the table. Further, the 30% does only apply to in-app subscribers, and though you want to claim that means everyone has therefore had their choice removed and must subscribe in-app, that's simply false. In addition, if most of your subscribers come from in-app purchases, you can thank Apple for setting up and maintaining an eco-system that is in turn your largest market.