Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

venomousporridge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 143 posts

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#91

Post by ryanwhitney »

nchuhoai wrote: post #73
ryanwhitney wrote: post #16

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 iB…

"It also gives anyone the ability to distribute an iBook outside the iBookstore." That is exactly what the author complains about, you cannot distribute an iBook outside the store: "if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions"

Yes, my statement said the program gave you the ability to do so, but not the right to.

The reason to say this was to make the point that unlike apps where you don't have the ability to distribute them outside of the store, the EULA is in this case necessary to lock down the user experience to iPad and resulting profits of providing this to Apple.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#93

Post by Turing_Machine »

Natsu wrote: post #86
Turing_Machine wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's right on the dialog where you publish your document, not just buried in the EULA.

A place where you will find it after creating the document, rather than before.

"Where you'll find it after creating your first experimental 'Hello, world' document" might be a better way of putting it, unless you're suggesting that someone might actually write an entire book using a piece of new software without even testing it out.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#94

Post by jasomill »

ootachi wrote: post #58
nirvana wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

You are being obtuse. It is immoral if you bury onerous terms (such as "you will give us the sole right to distribute your works") in an EULA that you know ordinary people have no hope of comprehending (such as this one). For all the other examples you give, society generally knows the implied contract. These terms are not part of the contract that society expects from a free tool used to compose documents, and you k…

It's hardly buried: it's mentioned in the description of the app, it's mentioned inside the app when you "publish", it's mentioned in the help file for the app, and it appears, in boldface letters, as an "IMPORTANT NOTE", at the _beginning_ of the EULA.

Also worth mentioning: the economics of K–12 textbook publishing are very different than mass-market publishing: essentially 100% of sales are volume purchases by educational institutions who are already accustomed to distributing materials to students.

This is Apple's proposed alternative to publishers bundling interactive content with expensive textbooks (probably "free" if available on the App Store), and the value proposition is wide exposure, lower infrastructure costs, and no used textbook market to undercut profits in exchange for "a la carte" distribution of individual "unbundled" books and a unit price cap.

In other words, it really is an attempt to apply much of the "iTunes business model" to textbook publishing, and it'll be quite interesting to see how it works out.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#95

Post by feralchimp »

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…

>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.

Comparing the history of "Apple-branded Mac software for which Apple does not charge users license fees" with the history of the "free for non-commercial use" software projects of the world is...a stretch.

Xcode is free. GarageBand has been included free on any semi-recently purchased Mac. iWeb who knows; Keynote, Pages, and Numbers are very low cost (and FWIW they each probably share code with iBooks Author).

Imagine for a moment that the next update to Xcode or GarageBand included EULA language similar to what the OP is complaining about. Would you defend it on the grounds you cite above, or not? And if not, why not?

Are there any other free applications on the Mac App Store that contain similar license language? If a third-party developer had a free application rejected from the Mac App Store for including this type of license language in the EULA, would you be surprised, or would you find the rejection consistent with the expectations that Apple has set for non-expert users on the platform?

If the "iBooks Author" application were something that had to be downloaded from inside an iBooks Developer Program portal, where you had to accept the license language as an explicit step to getting a portal account, I wouldn't care so much. But Apple literally held a press conference to tell the whole world "hey this shiny free shovel is going to enable happy rainbow pony time for the children, and everyone with a Mac and something to write for the children should download it right now and start digging."

>Very often today we've seen Apple offer all kinds of new and innovative things, and I've seen a content stream of comments along the lines of "these are bad because apple profits from them". Of course Apple profits. We all profit, though, because they changed the economics of the education situation. If you want something different, create it.

I totally agree with you on this point. And I would even agree that it's the most important point. In return, all I ask is that you join me in finding their EULA shenanigans slightly scummy in their bait-and-switchness.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#96

Post by Natsu »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #93
Natsu wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A place where you will find it after creating the document, rather than before.

"Where you'll find it after creating your first experimental 'Hello, world' document" might be a better way of putting it, unless you're suggesting that someone might actually write an entire book using a piece of new software without even testing it out.

It's not like they couldn't have made this clear by showing the same information when you first started the program, rather than when you have something you want to save. I can think of many reasons for that choice, but none are good.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#97

Post by ekianjo »

Get an Apple typewriter. Write your Book. Once it's done Apple knocks on your door, tells you that you have to sell their book in their store, and they will take a cut from it. And if you are against that, you can't sell it at all.

So much for the 21st century progress and freedom to own what you create.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#98

Post by jasomill »

Someone wrote: post #81
nchuhoai wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It also gives anyone the ability to distribute an iBook outside the iBookstore." That is exactly what the author complains about, you cannot distribute an iBook outside the store: "if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions"

IANAL, but an obvious workaround is to sell the eBook version and add an iBook version for free with every order. Problem with that approach is that receivers of the iBook can distribute copies at will.

IANAL either, but Apple's lawyers _are_ lawyers, so rest assured that they've thought about this, as well.

I suspect the answer is this: you're free to sell the e-book version for a fee and give away the iBooks version: this just makes the iPad a more attractive product and undercuts your own e-book sales. This is probably a stupid move on your part, but that's hardly Apple's problem.

But giving away the iBooks version _only to purchasers of the e-book version_ is equivalent to the iBooks version being a "feature" of the (non-free) e-book version, which is quite different than "giving away the iBooks version". This would also apply to giving away the iBooks version, but only to members of my fee-based "book club", subscribers to my fee-based newsletter, and so on. Otherwise, what stops textbook publishers from selling non-iBooks "teachers' editions" for $10,000, then giving away copies of the iBooks versions to students enrolled in courses taught by holders of teachers' editions, then passing the $10,000 cost on to students by way of "enrollment fees" or tuition hikes, offset by the fact that "textbooks are now free"?

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#99

Post by ekianjo »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #31
dman wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah I see where our difference in opinion originates from - you look at the book outputted by the tool as a derived work. I must admit I never conceived of this possibility, and I am still trying to digest it. I wonder how many authors who use Apple's product will realise that after two years of hard work to create a manuscript, just by hitting publish the outputted object will not wholly belong to them.

The generated book contains Apple's code. It's definitely a derivative work. That said, a person would be foolish to write the entire book using this. Write your text and create your graphics in your editors of choice, import them into this tool to create a nice layout for the iBookstore, then import them into another tool to create a nice layout for Kindle or whatever. You might have to do that anyway -- I've yet to…

How can it be qualified as derivative work ? If you consider it this way, then everything in your life is a derivative work of something else. Writing a patent on paper is a derivate work of the paper manufacturer ? Painting a picture would be a derivative work of the brushes and paint ?

There is no ground for any of this.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#100

Post by statictype »

ryanwhitney wrote: post #90
statictype wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple doesn't own the Apps that you create or claim partial ownership of it. Your code and it's output belongs to you. The developer license is offensive in it's own way but that's a different issue than what's happening here with iBooks

Sorry, but where does Apple claim partial ownership? Maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen that. You own a car, but you're licensed and registered by the state. You can paint it whatever color you want, but can you make an exact duplicate of that car and sell it as your own? Nope. Can you sell it without transferring registration? Nope (at least, not without alternate state paperwork). You might "own" it, but you sti…

Sorry, but where does Apple claim partial ownership? Maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen that.

hm, you may be right. I got it from the paraphrased part of the article (right after the bold EULA text) but now that I look at it, it wasn't actually stated explicitly in the contract anywhere.

Post reply on HN