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Apple's iBooks EULA Drawing Ire
An anonymous reader writes in with one of many articles about the iBooks EULA, this time questioning whether it is even enforceable. Quoting: "The iBooks Author EULA plainly tries to create an exclusive license for Apple to be the sole distributor of any worked created with it, but under the Copyright Act an exclusive license is a 'transfer of copyright ownership,' and under 17 U.S.C. 204 such a transfer 'is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed.' When authors rebel and take their work elsewhere, Apple has, at most, a claim for breach-of-EULA — but their damages are the failure to pay $0 for the program."
Bic Pens Inc now claims exclusive distributorship rights for anything created with one of their writing implements.
Not to be outdone, Starbucks now claims exclusive distributorship rights for anything created while under the influence of their beverages.
Not really, people distributing their works for money aren't typically going to also distribute them for free. That would undermine sales. Some people will distribute works under a pay what you can, pay what you want or pay what you think it's worth model, but in any of those cases it's going to be a commercial distribution.
It might be technically a misstatement, but it's correct in virtually all cases.
Unfortunately, it stipulates that you must sign a contract prior to consideration of your work being distributed through iBooks.
What this means. Don't attempt to get published through Apple or you will be beholden to them in perpetuity AND they don't even have to publish it.
Tricky, scheister-y Apple.
Worst part, there will be an endless stream of authors clambering to be first in line to give up their copyrights in exchange for a chance at being published.
That sucks.
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
First entry up on google for self publishing epubs:
http://www.lulu.com/
They even do paper versions.
Deleted
Actually, PDF is an open standard and Adobe has granted anybody royalty free use of it. There may be patents that are not known that could apply, but for now there aren't any that have been asserted.
The MP3 patents are most likely expired by now in the US, that should apply to other jurisdictions as well as the US presently conforms with the WTO's TRIPs
PDF is free and open now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdf
Relevant snippet:
"While the PDF specification was available for free since at least 2001,[4] PDF was originally a proprietary format controlled by Adobe, and was officially released as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO 32000-1:2008.[1][5] In 2008, Adobe published a Public Patent License to ISO 32000-1 granting a royalty-free rights for all patents owned by Adobe that are necessary to make, use, sell and distribute PDF compliant implementations.[6]"
Apple makes great products, and I was their customer for almost twenty years, but a few years ago I gave them up. I could no longer stand the bullshit and shenanigans which come with all their products. For me, the breaking point came when my next-gen iPod couldn't use the $1 cables I'd had with my previous-gen iPod, and now I was expected to buy Apple-branded chip-locked cables for $50. FIFTY DOLLARS!
No. No, no, no. Fuck you, no. I still own and like my MacBook Pro (from 2007), but it is starting to get a little long in the tooth, and in the next couple years I'll replace it with something other than a Mac. I replaced my iPod with an Android pod. I bought an Android tablet instead of an iPad. I'm a programmer who might write apps, but I don't even consider the iOS platform.
iBooks? Sounds great! The world desperately needs to shake up the textbook industry, and I'm happy that a large company is doing something about it. But no, I won't consider it. Since I gave up Apple, they have continued to release products which look great and reportedly work great, but no, I'm not willing to put up with the bullshit to use them, because that would make me feel like a chump.
I do have a sliver of hope that all the bullshit was due to Steve Jobs' personal hatred for his customers, and now that he is dead perhaps Apple will slowly shed that hatred. There are no signs of that yet, but I would expect it to take a while.
Apple isn't demanding to be sole distributor of your works, just of the format it's tool creates. Go ahead and distribute your works elsewhere, as long as you don't distribute it using their modified ePub3 format. Or distribute your works in their format gratis. That's also okay.
$99 annual developer's fee later *cough*xcode*cough*
Well, the big difference there is that nothing stops you from cross-compiling your software on other platforms.
XCode 4 doesn't cost a dime. You only need to pay money if you want to deploy your app via the App Store.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Apple makes no claims on copyright, or on your work - ONLY on output of the software. You are totally free to format the same work in some other tool and sell that.
Again, to put it another way, It's not exclusive as to your content but ONLY TO OUTPUT FROM THE TOOL.
The free tool, that Apple gave you for free. And they ask to make money if you want to sell something produced with it? How dare they!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
TFA said so plainly. The iBooks format is html5 wrapped is a very thin container (Apple likes content standards). Their authoring tool is essentially a specialized html editor. Nothing stops you from taking the content you used to create an iTextBook and then using it to create a nearly identical eTextBook on another platform. You just aren't supposed to take the exact same thinly wrapped .ibook file and make that available outside of Apple's store. Maybe it's a silly clause, but obviously since they don't claim to own your content then they aren't stopping you from releasing said content in any form you choose.
If it was just about the format it wouldn't be an issue. It's about the EULA. It's about Apple seducing (iEverything looks damn sexy, easy to use, etc...) authors into a walled garden. It's about limiting the rights of authors by hiding the nitty-gritty in a document that doesn't get to be seen until after you've spent all that effort to make a shiny new iBook. You're options at that point amount to: export it to severely format deprived pdf or (by changing the extension from ibook to epub, and again, losing any and all formatting) epub or straight up text (sans pictures, etc...).
The whole reason for using iBook Author was to make it shiny. To give it that magical quality that people lust after.
Now, once a competent conversion program comes out, that keeps all the formatting and everything, the iBook lock-in hurt will be lessened.
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
Really. It's even in the fscking EULA:
"Title and intellectual property rights in and to any content displayed by or accessed through the Apple Software belongs to the respective content owner."
Note the "content". Software (as iBooks Author) creates files or documents or "works", but not content. Authors create content. This content is yours.
If you think this is word-wanking, try the following gedankenexperiment:
You write a book using MS Word for the text, Photoshop for the illustrations and you even buy some high-quality photos for it. Then you import all of that into iBooks Author to create a book for the iBook Store. You also import all of that into InDesign (or whatever software you bought for creating ePubs) to sell elsewhere.
How should the book you created from *your* content be affected by the iBook Author EULA? It isn't. Apple even spells this out in the EULA. The content of course is yours to sell.
I'm not an Apple fanboi and I don't like Apple very much but I think iBook Author and the iBook store is a good idea. I also don't like the EULA terms very much but they are not what some people would like you to think they are. If you want to sell the file created with iBooks Author you can sell it only via Apple. But if you want to sell your content in that book elsewhere you can still do that.
Meanwhile I just hate that kind of sensational journalism that ignores facts and just wants to drive page-views by fueling hate and fury. Really, I'm sick of it. Be rational and READ THE FUCKING EULA.
He was talking about real writers, who drank and wrote fucking awesome novels... that they had mental disorders doesn't factor into this. That they suffered for the art doesn't factor into it. They were fucking great writers not artsy types sipping 5 dollar coffees waiting for inspiration. Inspiration comes from real life and any two bit drunk with severe mental issues will see more of it then any wannabe at Starbucks.
Normal people don't write great works of art. Normal people buy them and wish they had a fraction of the talent without being willing to pay the price for it. The candle that burns brightest, burns the shortest. Now if I was a heavy drinker, had mental problems that would make any shrink go "get him off, GET HIM OFF!" and blew my brains out at the end of my natural life expectancy, this post would have been a lot better.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Now are you upset they want to help sell the result?
I think he's upset that they want to be the sole distributor of the work, no problem with them helping to sell it and taking a cut of the sales they get for you (well some people might, but i would say that's perfectly acceptable) but if they prevent you from distributing the work you created that's a bit much.
the GPL is viral by force. When you get something GPL, the output WILL be GPL. It's required.
I don't know what you intended, but what you wrote is patently false.
The output of a GPL program is not affected by the license in any way, shape or form.
If you take someone else's GPL software and you make changes to it, and you distribute those changes, then and only then does the GPL come into play.
Apple's software, on the other hand, is insidious because it does infect the output. You are forbidden from selling the output of that software on any service other than Apple's.
So if what you really meant to say is that GPL has no effect whatsoever on how you use the software (as opposed to how you distribute it), and that Apple's software does... then yes, I couldn't agree more.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Sole commercial distributor, not sole distributor. The quote is a misstatement of the policy.
And this only refers to the binary produced by the iBooks Author program. Apple makes no claim on your content, you are free to produce other ebooks using different tools and distribute elsewhere.
$99 annual developer's fee later *cough*xcode*cough*
Well, the big difference there is that nothing stops you from cross-compiling your software on other platforms.
And nothing prevents you from generating your ebook with a different tool and selling it on other platforms. Only the binary generated by iBooks Author is restricted, not the content itself.
Uhhhh - a lot of people distribute their work both free, and for a fee. http://www.baen.com/library/intro.asp
In fact, the idea that free copies of your work will "undermine sales" is so terribly misguided - I wonder if you've been studying economics at RIAA University.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
But they're not. There's no transfer of ownership. You get to choose if you want to take advantage of the huge exposure of the iBooks Store. If so, you use Apple's free tool to create an interactive book format that works there. If not, don't. In either case, you can take that same content and use another tool to format it for a different store without restriction. The only thing you can't do is have your cake and eat it, too: take Apple's free tool and use it to create content for a competing store. It's a restriction on the tool use, not on the fate of your content.
Sure. But the word processor produces very, very little output. Most is produced by the person on the keyboard.
So you do think they should own the output? (by 'own' of course it means you cannot sell it on your terms)
It's quite simple really. You start iBooks Author, paste in your 300 pages textbook or novel, format it, and... everything up to this point is exclusively yours. Then you select "Export" from the file menu, and then choose the "iBook" option. This produces an output file. And that output file can according to the EULA only be sold through Apple, or given away for free.
Yes i get it, but that's no different from the output of any other application or tool for that matter. For example LibreOffice, Photoshop, Final Cut, Keynote, Logic, etc... Should the output of those tools be effectively owned by the tool creators?
I don't know much about Amazon, i'll take your word that their license is worse.
There is the other point of view which would be looking at iBooks Author as an artificially-tied component of the iBooks product, but then artificial tying of products in that way has never been particularly popular.
Ah, goatse is back! Maybe this is a sign that the trolls are going to go back up in quality.
It's irrelevant. Word processors are sold (or given away) as general purpose document creation applications. iBooks Author isn't.
Sure it is, it's given away as a general purpose document creation application (there was a topic on this the other day about how its format is epub3 and that almost all of it can be read and interpreted correctly by any epub3 reader), I can download it for free and view the output in whatever I want, they're just saying they basically own its output. So of course the question is what happens if i take that output and convert it to another format and sell it?
Usually such people distribute the online version for free, and sell the printed version for a fee. It makes no sense to sell the same online version both for free and for a fee.
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
I'm on Windows and on the page it says, "To download Xcode from the Mac App Store, you need a Mac with Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later .". So where can I get one of those for free?
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
Nowhere is Apple describing it as general purpose document creation application
When you're artificially tying products together you generally do avoid marketing them as such, but that's neither here nor there, the question is regarding ownership of the output.
And nowhere has Apple ever said that iBooks Author outputs epub. It doesn't output epub.
Actually it does, it just has some additional extensions, have a look at it. And that's the point, if someone interprets those extensions then you import that into another tool what happens to those distribution rights?
No. It has the wrong file extension and the wrong mime-type to be seen as epub by any other app. And even if you changed those, the other app isn't going to understand any Apple specific extensions.
Oh no, MIME type and file extensions, so prohibitive, the point is then what? What happens to that content then? What part of it is exclusive to Apple? If i change the MIME and extension then what happens to those distribution rights? What part of that file do they retain rights to?
IANAL. My point is only that there is no comparison between this task specific free tool, and a general purpose word processor.
Well drilling down from the initial question gets you here, it's the question of ownership of the output of the tool so if i change something in that output it isn't going to be consistent with the output of the tool so do i get those rights back or do they claim more than just distribution rights on their output?
Apple can't acquire your copyright except through written contract. To paint this as an attempt to 'steal' your copyright in the books you write is simply incorrect.
Apple is merely trying to control how you distribute the files outputted by iBooks Author. This is done to try and keep up Apple's walled-garden approach.
Apple's EULA clearly indicates that copyright in the work is retained by the owner. (Section 2.d of the license.)
Apple's EULA still might not be cool, but it does not try and create an exclusive license. (And even if it did try, it fails.)
A lengthier analysis can be found here: The iBooks Author EULA: What does it really mean?
You want your education to be based on older inferior technology, just to spite Apple? Insane.
What? iBooks are just ePub files. They're far from superior to anything we have already -- they ARE what we have already, though without the free and open standards part.
While electronic textbooks are a bit insane to begin with (and in many ways inferior to printed books), why make that worse by locking yourself to a single vendor for hardware, software, and the books? Who in their right mind would want that?
This has nothing to do with spite. It's just common sense.
Required reading for internet skeptics
I googled Humble Bundle and found a site selling games. We're talking about books, aren't we?
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
people distributing their works for money aren't typically going to also distribute them for free. That would undermine sales.
Sorry, but you're 100% incorrect. Very often what seems to be obvious is shown by scientific research to be completely false*. One book publisher thought the same thing as you a couple of years ago, so he commissioned a study to see how much revenue he was losing to piracy. With a book, it takes a few weeks for it to hit the net because it has to be scanned and OCRed, so they looked at how much sales dropped when the pirate edition was availabe. Both the researchers and publisher were amazed when it was shown that rather than a sales dip, there was actually a sales SPIKE. People read the book, liked it, and bought it.
I'll bet you think libraries cost publishers money, but you're wrong there, too. I have a dozen or more Asimov books on my shelf. Were I unable to read library books for free (I've read a few hundred of Asimov's) I would have never bought a single one. Only the rich or foolish would buy a book from an authout he hadn't read before unless it was highly praised by people he admired. BTW, you can get music CDs and movie DVDs at the library as well -- completely free. No charge. Walk in broke, walk out with an armload of books, CDs, and DVDs.
Most musicians give their music away. Of course, most musicians aren't RIAA's musicians. Professional musicians I know wouldn't touch an RIAA contract with a ten foot pole; they know the RIAA is made up of nothing but thieving parasites that suck the lifeblood from artists.
Want some free sci-fi ebooks? Go to boing boing, Doctorow credits his status as a New York Times best seller to the fact that he gives his books away for free on there. As he says, nobody ever lost a dime from piracy, but many artists have starved from obscurity.
They're not going to read your book if they've never heard of you. BTW, my old Paxil Diaries on K5 half a deceade ago will be in print soon, at the request of readers. Had I not put them on the net, there's no way I could turn them into a book and have anyone read it.
* another example, although not on topic, is marijuana research. Since all smoke contains carcinogens, it was thought that marijuana cased cancer, so they did a statistical study to back up the hypothesis. They had 4 groups of geezers: nonsmokers, long term cigarette smokers, long term pot smokers, and long term smokers of both substances. They were amazed to find that there was no statistically signifigant differences between long term pot smokers and nonsmokers, and the potsmokers actually had fewer cancers (again, statistically insignifigant). What blew them away was the finding that those who smoked both pot and tobacco had half the cancer rates of those who only smoked tobacco! Rather than causing cancer, it appears to prevent it.
That's what science is for -- to test whether your perceptions are real. As often as not, they aren't.
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