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

101–110 of 143 posts

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#101

Post by ekianjo »

nirvana wrote: post #20
ugh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Making profit should be proportional to the amount of work + the amount of money needed for the initial investment to be recouped. With such kind of agreements, Apple can claim money FOREVER on this app, no matter the small investment that was initially needed to created this app. This is disproportionate. It's like if I give you a hammer, and then I claim that in all the houses you build with it, you would owe one room. It's disproportionate, because "building a house" is way longer and more difficult than building a hammer.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#102

Post by jasomill »

drcube wrote: post #38

When is Microsoft going to get the bright idea to incorporate everything anybody writes in Word or Visual Studio into their own IP portfolio? Or Adobe appropriates the copyright of any image edited with Photoshop? Here's to the crazy ones.

Presumably when Microsoft starts giving away Word and makes Visual Studio a compelling platform for cross-platform development?

In all honesty, given the iPad's share of the tablet market, making unrestricted, high-quality, cross-platform interactive content development tools available to iOS developers at no cost might provoke antitrust claims from the likes of Adobe. But Adobe isn't likely to sell expensive digital publishing software to authors of free books, and mainstream publishers are unlikely to commit to "iPad exclusive" titles to avoid a few thousand dollars in software licenses.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#103

Post by eob »

There's another bit that nobody has brought up: no author ever ends up owning the entirety of his or her work. If I write a book for Harper Collins, I am not allowed to reproduce or distribute that content via any channel not approved by them, and they give much worse than a 70/30 cut.

As hackers, we are debating these books as if they are software, but remember that they are products at the intersection of two industries, and publishers have had authors in restrictive and less-than-lucrative contracts for a long time.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#104

Post by bradleyland »

feralchimp wrote: post #95
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.…

> 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?

The Xcode example is already a reality. If you produce an iOS app using Xcode, you have two choices: sell it for a price in the App Store and pay Apple a cut, or give it away.

I would not be at all surprised if the Xcode EULA contained language enforcing this now that you are no longer required to have an ADC account (free or otherwise) to download Xcode.

The greater point stands. If Apple had made iBooks Author only able to publish to the iBookstore, no one would have been surprised. It's their platform, and they do as they please. Don't like it, don't use it. I know a few publishers that are making this very judgement call right now: build our own web-based platform, or pay Apple's vig. Sure, they'd love to use Apple's tool for free. They'd also like to stop paying $1200 for Adobe's Creative Suite, but that's not happening either.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#105

Post by ootachi »

jasomill wrote: post #94
ootachi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 edu…

It's still a trap. When you copy and paste your content into the iBooks software, you instantly hand over all the distribution rights, as part of the terms of an EULA of a consumer product. Sure, this is the kind of thing that the record industry does if you sign your band over to them, but this is a consumer product we're talking about. This is far beyond what a consumer should expect from such software. If Apple wants exclusive distribution deals, it should make people sign for it so that both parties are completely aware of what they're getting into.

And the iTunes business model was never about exclusivity. You can buy most of the music on iTunes elsewhere. (There is some exclusive content, obviously, but it is the exception, not the rule.) And, most importantly, the deals negotiated to get music on iTunes are done the old fashioned way: as a mutual, signed agreement between Apple and the labels in question.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#106

Post by bradleyland »

cjoh wrote: post #75

Can someone explain this a bit better to me? Let's say I write a book called "My Awesome Comments from HackerNews, Unabridged" (MACFHU) using Microsoft Word. And I send that to my publisher, retaining all rights to publish the book still. Then I adapt MACFHU for iBooks using the iBook Author tool. Would I then be prohibited from selling my book in the iBookstore because it's already available in hardcover? If I publi…

It is the latter. Only the output is restricted. The material belongs to you.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#107

Post by tikhonj »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #24

For better or worse, why do people continue to be surprised when Apple does these things? They make good stuff, their users don't care and developers still flock to them. It's like raging at Adobe because Reader sucks, even though plenty of decent, light-weight PDF readers exist. If you don't like the EULA, don't agree to it and use something else.

Yes, you should not use it. However, given that this is an odious practice, you should also attempt to raise awareness: the more people know, the fewer will run into it. This is exactly what this post is doing, and it is a good thing.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#108

Post by drivebyacct2 »

tikhonj wrote: post #107
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #24

For better or worse, why do people continue to be surprised when Apple does these things? They make good stuff, their users don't care and developers still flock to them. It's like raging at Adobe because Reader sucks, even though plenty of decent, light-weight PDF readers exist. If you don't like the EULA, don't agree to it and use something else.

Yes, you should not use it. However, given that this is an odious practice, you should also attempt to raise awareness: the more people know, the fewer will run into it. This is exactly what this post is doing, and it is a good thing.

Sorry, it wasn't so much a reaction to the content of the post as much as the pseudo-"outrage" expressed by some here.

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#109

Post by halostatue »

statictype wrote: post #47
Turing_Machine wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's a derived work in the same way that linking to stdlib from your program makes it a derived work. Which is to say, no, it's not reasonable to call books you wrote with this tool to be considered a derived work.

Reasonable or not, that is in fact what they are from a purely legal perspective. There is usually legalese involved with the licensing of the stdlib such that it explicitly disclaims derivative creation in this case.

This is not an uncommon thing to see. IIRC, the gcc compilers have an explicit exception clause that says that programs compiled with gcc (e.g., the output) are not affected by the GNU GPL. A compiler usually does more than just transforms code from a higher-level language to a lower-level language. It can reorganize the code (-O2, -O3, -O4); it can inject standard or custom implementations of common behaviours that the user didn't explicitly write.

From a very real and very strict standpoint, a compiler/code generator does create a derivative work (and there's at least one code generator I've used in the past few years that holds this to be true explicitly; gSOAP) that is a combination of your copyrighted code and the code by the compiler writer (and possibly others involved).

Re: The Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

#110

Post by halostatue »

troymc wrote: post #54
tstegart wrote: post #11

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 W…

Indeed, there's a new ebook-production service (still in beta) named Vook which aims to give authors the ability to produce ebooks in all the major ebook formats, including EPUB, Amazon's formats, and now whatever Apple calls their new iBooks 2 format. An author would use Vook's software, not Apple's, so the iBooks Author EULA wouldn't apply. Smashwords offers a conversion service similar to Vook's, and is much older…

iBooks 2 format is more or less ePub3, as I understand it. I could understand it incorrectly.

I can also speak fairly highly of the leanpub team's process. My wife and I are finding it less than perfect for our needs in producing a fiction book with both ebook and print-ready book needs, but appreciate the directness and promptness with which both Scott & Peter have been responding to us when we are raising issues with what we're seeing.

Better yet, their conversion is free with no commitment to sell your book on leanpub required. I'd happily pay for what they're providing for free because it's so damned easy.

Post reply on HN