The Problem With Long Reader, The Random Longreads Generator

It’s not surprising that a service which exists solely to scrape and republish random #longread articles in their entirety made some people — like writers and publishers! — a little upset. What is surprising isn’t just that its creators, Mohammad Kayyali and Beshr Kayali, don’t think they’re doing anything wrong by copying and republishing full-length articles — it’s how their entire thought process about online publishing works. (Though perhaps they are just trolling! In which case this would all be darkly funny.)

Source: @beshr

Source: @mskayyali

Source: @mskayyali

Source: @mskayyali

Source: @mskayyali

Source: @mskayyali

Source: @mariabustillos

Source: @beshr

Source: @beshr

Source: @beshr

Source: @beshr

Source: @mariabustillos

Source: @Choire

Source: @Choire

Source: @beshr

Source: @beshr

Source: @beshr

Source: @beshr

Source: @beshr

Source: @beshr

It’s this thought process, the idea that anything available on the web is not owned by anyone, so it’s not really possible to “steal” it — in some ways, the same kind of thought process behind torrenting music or movies or TV shows — that is potentially so deadly to publishers, many of whom are already surviving on the edge.