I think I remember in the early days there being pushback from content providers about not getting clickthroughs, ad impressions. What's the status of this type of service re: copyright? Neither Pocket nor users have any right to transform / create derivative works -- is there some loophole here about personal use and not re-distributing?
Is it a copyright violation to make a cross-stitch version of a tweet for your living room? To provide a meme generator service that uses NYT headlines?
"Neither Pocket nor users have any right to transform / create derivative works "
Here in the U.S. this kind of copying by end users is probably fair use, which is a defense to copyright infringement. There is a line of cases that authorize home recording of video broadcasts. I think the reasoning upholding this "time shifting" or "format shifting" would also apply to a read it later service.
It is very unlikely that a publisher would ever try to sue an individual reader for using one of these services. It is more likely they would try to shut down the service itself by claiming that the service induces or is liable for contributing to the end-users' copyright infringement. But these claims would fail if what the users are doing is fair use.
The weakness of the U.S.-style fair use concept is that it is a case-by-case determination based on several vague factors. Getting a legal case to the point where this determination is actually made is very expensive, so we don't have much precedent to rely on for new kinds of activities. And what precedent we do have is not always easily extended to new activities or technologies.
Is it a copyright violation to make a cross-stitch version of a tweet for your living room? To provide a meme generator service that uses NYT headlines?