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The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

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Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#11

Post by tstegart »

I think this guy is wrong. He's mixing apples and oranges when it comes to who owns what. Apple is requiring people who use its software to create an e-book to give Apple a cut of the proceeds of the Apple created e-book. The author still owns his or her content. If you want to sell your book, just don't sell the form of the book made by Apple's software. You can still sell a PDF, for example. Or you can sell your Word file. You can sell anything really. But if you want to sell the nice design Apple lets you make, you have to give them money.

I believe you can simultaneously sell an e-book in the iBookstore and sell a non-Apple created e-book with the exact same content somewhere else. For example, a word document turned into an e-book on Amazon. Just don't try and sell your Apple created e-book on Amazon, that's all.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#12

Post by unavoidable »

Locke1689 wrote: post #6

You can certainly put anything you want in a EULA. Whether or not this is enforceable is another matter. Has any court ever upheld this kind of contract?

It would likely be enforceable unless the term is "unreasonable" or "unconscionable"... although we certainly may not like it, I don't think it would necessarily meet those thresholds in a court of law because there are other alternatives to publishing using iBook.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProCD_v._Zeidenberg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_of_adhesion#Contracts_...

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#13

Post by jonhendry »

dman wrote: post #5
nirvana wrote: post #4

Over the years I've seen a large volume of creative software, often free, that is used to produce output, that requires, as part of its license, that you give the creator of the software a cut if you sell any of the things you make with it. This includes everything that is "free for non-commercial use", such as, if I recall correctly, Blender (in the past), most of the Free Fonts out there, and a lot of free software…

The exact analogy in FSF terms which you were careful to avoid is - An executable created by a GPL compiler will have to be GPL licensed. This is where your analogy breaks down because this is explicitly not the case.

What about GPL-licensed javascript code used in a web app? (Or in, say, a desktop application that uses a WebView for part of its interface, in which it uses the GPL-licensed javascript).

There may be some content or code from Apple that gets baked into your iBooks to enable some functionality or other. Maybe bits of Apple-developed javascript that get stuck in to mediate between the HTML and the iBooks application.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#14

Post by nirvana »

dman wrote: post #5
nirvana wrote: post #4

Over the years I've seen a large volume of creative software, often free, that is used to produce output, that requires, as part of its license, that you give the creator of the software a cut if you sell any of the things you make with it. This includes everything that is "free for non-commercial use", such as, if I recall correctly, Blender (in the past), most of the Free Fonts out there, and a lot of free software…

The exact analogy in FSF terms which you were careful to avoid is - An executable created by a GPL compiler will have to be GPL licensed. This is where your analogy breaks down because this is explicitly not the case.

>you were careful to avoid

Don't attribute to others derogatory actions as an argument technique.

>This is where your analogy breaks down because this is explicitly not the case.

The existence of software that does not fit my analogy does not change the fact that there are many situations where the analogy still holds. In fact, the GPL itself is an example of the analogy holding- the GPL prohibits certain kinds of commercial use of creations derived by the thing protected by GPL, just as the Author app does.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#15

Post by nirvana »

dchest wrote: post #8
nirvana wrote: post #4

Over the years I've seen a large volume of creative software, often free, that is used to produce output, that requires, as part of its license, that you give the creator of the software a cut if you sell any of the things you make with it. This includes everything that is "free for non-commercial use", such as, if I recall correctly, Blender (in the past), most of the Free Fonts out there, and a lot of free software…

We still can discuss it, and argue whether such contracts should be enforceable. The fact that there is already a practice of doing what Apple is doing doesn't mean that we should stop debates. We may be not entitled to demand people to produce things for our benefit, but we're certainly entitled to demand the freedom to do what we want with already produced things.

>We may be not entitled to demand people to produce things for our benefit, but we're certainly entitled to demand the freedom to do what we want with already produced things.

The only difference between those two example is temporal. I don't think that difference makes a difference.

Do you have the right to demand that people who have already produced some software, give it away for free and never be allowed to charge for it?

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#16

Post by ryanwhitney »

I'm not seeing why this is so unreasonable, if someone could fill me in.

The program is for creating iBooks, not eBooks, to be sold through their iBookstore. I'm seeing these more as apps than something like .ePub files or .PDFs.

Unlike apps though, which require an developer license to load yourself, Author gives anyone the ability to run these books on your iPad. It also gives anyone the ability to distribute an iBook outside the iBookstore.

Since licensing every person who wanted to create an iBook would be a pain in the ass for Apple and a barrier to creation, this seems to be the next good option.

It prevents anyone from creating their own iBook marketplace (reasonable) and profiting off of a software that Apple is giving away for free, under the agreement that products of it are sold though their marketplace. No?

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#17

Post by nirvana »

jonhendry wrote: post #13
dman wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact analogy in FSF terms which you were careful to avoid is - An executable created by a GPL compiler will have to be GPL licensed. This is where your analogy breaks down because this is explicitly not the case.

What about GPL-licensed javascript code used in a web app? (Or in, say, a desktop application that uses a WebView for part of its interface, in which it uses the GPL-licensed javascript). There may be some content or code from Apple that gets baked into your iBooks to enable some functionality or other. Maybe bits of Apple-developed javascript that get stuck in to mediate between the HTML and the iBooks application.

You're correct. The iBooks Author app embeds Apple code, both HTML, and Javascript, in the form of easy to use Widgets that enable the functions that make the book more than just text, such as photo galleries, embedded movies, etc.

Thus an iBook produced with the app is a derivative work that includes within it Apple copyrighted code.

Apple's ability to restrict the use of such derivative works is the very same ability the GPL relies on.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#18

Post by jws »

dman wrote: post #5
nirvana wrote: post #4

Over the years I've seen a large volume of creative software, often free, that is used to produce output, that requires, as part of its license, that you give the creator of the software a cut if you sell any of the things you make with it. This includes everything that is "free for non-commercial use", such as, if I recall correctly, Blender (in the past), most of the Free Fonts out there, and a lot of free software…

The exact analogy in FSF terms which you were careful to avoid is - An executable created by a GPL compiler will have to be GPL licensed. This is where your analogy breaks down because this is explicitly not the case.

Depends on the FSF tool. For many years the output of Bison (FSF's yacc clone) would propagate a GPL onto your entire program is you used it.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#19

Post by ugh »

nirvana wrote: post #4

Over the years I've seen a large volume of creative software, often free, that is used to produce output, that requires, as part of its license, that you give the creator of the software a cut if you sell any of the things you make with it. This includes everything that is "free for non-commercial use", such as, if I recall correctly, Blender (in the past), most of the Free Fonts out there, and a lot of free software…

That’s the legal side.

It’s still possible to be disgusted by this for purely moral reasons. Apple is pulling some vile bullshit here and they shouldn’t.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#20

Post by nirvana »

ugh wrote: post #19
nirvana wrote: post #4

Over the years I've seen a large volume of creative software, often free, that is used to produce output, that requires, as part of its license, that you give the creator of the software a cut if you sell any of the things you make with it. This includes everything that is "free for non-commercial use", such as, if I recall correctly, Blender (in the past), most of the Free Fonts out there, and a lot of free software…

That’s the legal side. It’s still possible to be disgusted by this for purely moral reasons. Apple is pulling some vile bullshit here and they shouldn’t.

I was actually arguing the moral point. There's nothing immoral about setting the terms upon which you will trade your labor. Its the same as an employee deciding they want a higher salary or a lower one. The people who made this software give it away for free, under the understanding that it could be used by others who also give their work away fro free. What's wrong with that? But if people want to profit form it, then the people who made this software want to participate as well.

Are you saying that Apple should make this tool for free, give it away for free, and let it be used for any purpose, for free, and that to do otherwise is immoral? (you brought up being disgusted "for purely moral reasons")

How is giving software away for free to support an ecosystem you're building "vile bullshit" that "disgusts" you?

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