Apple Patent Reveals Gift-Giving Platform For NFC-Based iDevices

redletterdave writes "While downloading and storing digital media with online service providers has become commonplace — more so than purchasing DVDs and CDs at physical retail stores — it's not very easy to transfer digital files from one individual to another, usually because of copyright laws. Some digital distributors have systems for limiting usage and distribution of their products from the original purchaser to others, but often times, transferring a copyright-protected file from one device to another can result in the file being unplayable or totally inaccessible. Apple believes it has a solution to this issue: A gift-giving platform where users have a standardized way for buying, sending and receiving media files from a provider (iTunes) between multiple electronic devices (iPhones, iPads). The process is simply called, 'Gifting.'"

Comments

Please don't

[ShieldW0lf]

I'd feel guilty that the gift giver had funded what Apple is doing in the world. I'd be upset to receive such a gift.

Awesome!

[AngryDeuce]

That's totally easier than just downloading a DRM-free copy of the work and giving someone a copy via email or even sneakernet...

Oh, right, we're still pretending that there's something morally wrong with copying a bunch of ones and zeros that have no inherent value and convey no rights to the purchaser regarding First-Sale doctrine...

Re:Awesome!

[icebike]

copying a bunch of ones and zeros that have no inherent value

I'm confused. Why would anyone copy a collection of ones and zeros that had no value?
Doesn't the very act of copying them prove that there is an inherent value in the mind of the person making the copy?

Re:Awesome!

[icebike]

The work represented by the bits has value. Any particular copy of them does not.

Clearly any particular copy of them does hold value, or there would only be one copy. Someone took the time to make that additional copy. They did so because the second copy would have value. In fact it would have the same value as the first copy.

To suggest otherwise is to suggest mindless copying takes place almost at random and by accident.

Gifting is insightful

[goombah99]

It remains to be seen what actually comes from this, but it may address a central conundrum of ownership and copyright in the digital age. My feeling on the copyright issue is that if I have a book, I have one copy, but it is mine and I can give it or sell it or loan it to anyone I please. The key thing is that if I give my copy away then it is gone. I don't have it, and I can't give it to any more than one person at a time.

This satisfies the idea that the creator has control of the copy number (and hence meaning to the word copyright) and yet I have complete control over my copy including sharing it.

The problem is the digital age is how to transmit a copy to another person in such a way that I lose physical possession. You can think of a lot of complicated ways to do this. What is missing is a simple almost transparent and effortless way to do this. anything else either feels like a DRM trap or allows rampant distribution in violation of the creator's copyright.

If apple can solve this simplicity issue, then it bodes well for the industry and the consumer. Recall the pre 99 cent track days. by introducing that simple distillation it became less of a hassle to buy and share music across all your personal devices, for most people, this was simpler than hassling with trying to find it free somewhere.

I look forward to this to see if they implement it simply and equitably.

Re:Gifting is insightful

[PopeRatzo]

My feeling on the copyright issue is that if I have a book, I have one copy, but it is mine and I can give it or sell it or loan it to anyone I please. The key thing is that if I give my copy away then it is gone. I don't have it, and I can't give it to any more than one person at a time.

Sometimes, social conventions become obsolete, and that obsolescence is always a one-way street. Copyright has become obsolete, and all the DRM and increasingly desperate laws being put on the books to try to protect copyright are doomed to failure. When it's so easy to make perfect copies at will, perfect copies will be made. The pro-copyright people cannot possibly win. They can make life shittier and more expensive, but they can never, ever win this one.

The winners will be the ones who figure out new models for making a living from their work. The losers will be the ones who continue to cling pitifully to an outmoded ideal. Copyright was pretty much a stop-gap measure to begin with. It was always doomed to fail.

And know what? People will continue to create, to innovate and to make great music/art/literature/movies, because that's what humans do. At some point, the people who only got into it for the money will figure things out and move on to some other money-making venture. Can you imagine what it'll be like when the only ones left in those fields are the ones for whom it actually means something besides money? It could well trigger another Golden Age.

Re:Gifting is insightful

[goombah99]

My feeling on the copyright issue is that if I have a book, I have one copy, but it is mine and I can give it or sell it or loan it to anyone I please. The key thing is that if I give my copy away then it is gone. I don't have it, and I can't give it to any more than one person at a time.

Sometimes, social conventions become obsolete, and that obsolescence is always a one-way street. Copyright has become obsolete, and all the DRM and increasingly desperate laws being put on the books to try to protect copyright are doomed to failure. When it's so easy to make perfect copies at will, perfect copies will be made. The pro-copyright people cannot possibly win.

This is not really true. Consider Sheet music. It's trivial reprint this. So this issue was around well before the digital age. Copyright still has full meaning because the creators need compensation. THe fact that it became even cheaper to copy only makes the argument better for copyright protection not worse.

No the new thing is not the "cheapness" of the copy process negating the need for copyright, but rather the problem of how to transmit a copyrighted work without creating a new copy inadvertently.

Re:Gifting is insightful

[icebike]

If apple can solve this simplicity issue, then it bodes well for the industry and the consumer.

Actually, this issue can't be solved by Apple. All it can do is monopolize their proprietary solution, and tie you even tighter to their ecosystem. As long as Apple has to agree that you own a book or a song, you have no ownership. (Apple won't be around for ever). Ownership of digital media is an illusion. You really only have a book keeping entry on an Apple computer. Nothing more. Same for a Barns & Noble ebook. Its just an entry in a computer database.

A real solution for digital ownership would necessarily involve some form media encrypted with an owners key, which would be replaced when the media changed ownership. Think PGP encrypted email. That way, when you gift it to me, you encrypt it with my key, and re-write or erase your copy. But because its digital, any such scheme could eventually be hacked, perhaps as simply as restoring a backed up copy. This might not matter, because the effort involved in mass duplication with millions of users keys would be equivalent to photocopying books - possible but not practical. But until you replace all viewing technology, simply stripping the encryption would get us right back to the current situation.

No one has come up with any generic method that of media ownership transfer that does not require some third party to agree that you own it in the first place. There is no surprise here, the same exists for all major purchases in the physical world, Property Deeds, car titles. Only inexpensive items are consigned to mere "possession rules" in the physical rules.

It seems a toss-up whether such a system could be developed that allows third-party-free gifting and transfers of digital media before the whole concept of copyright collapses of its own weight.

That's "Giving", not "Giving"

[rueger]

The essence of giving is that I have an item, and freely pass it on to another individual.

What Apple offers is a way to buy something and have it delivered to someone else, al the while keeping it within Apple's steely grip.

Somehow that doesn't feel like "giving".

Re:Sounds like a great way for Apple to make money

[green1]

Nothing wrong with purchasing one, as long as you are then allowed to do anything at all that you want with it once you have. What is unacceptable is the current state of affairs where the media cartels refuse to clarify if you are buying of licensing, trying to get the best of both worlds
They say it's only a license to do something very specific any time you try to do something else with it (ie they claim it was only licensed for your home computer, and you shouldn't be allowed to move it to an MP3 player for example) and yet if you loose or delete the file, they refuse to let you have another one, because it was a purchase and not a license...
Can't have it both ways...(unless you can afford enough politicians)

Never such before.

[BootysnapChristAlive]

Why is such true ?