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IBooks detects jailbroken iphones

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Re: IBooks detects jailbroken iphones

#21

Post by ig1 »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #14

It appears that Apple is throwing caution to the wind and opening themselves up for a slew of lawsuits over… iBooks. Really? Even if a corporation doesn’t like us messing with their perfect OS, they can’t stop us from doing what’s legal. Sigh. Someone else who doesn't understand our rights include the right to enter into a contract that places burdens on both parties. There's no legal or moral reason that Apple can't…

Yes there are. There are plenty of rights which the law gives you which you can't surrender, because they occur in asymmetric situations where one party has more power than the other.

For example you can't sell yourself into slavery and you can't surrender your right to reverse engineer a technology (in most developed countries).

Anti-competitive practices is another area where the law has intervened in these sort of situations in the past. For example in the case of printer ink refills (although the law has chosen not to intervene in the console market).

Re: IBooks detects jailbroken iphones

#22

Post by kmfrk »

tptacek wrote: post #3

It's hard to muster too much outrage about this. You can't read your "rightfully purchased iBooks" on any other device either; you can't read them on a Kindle, nor, to the best of my knowledge, on an Apple Mac computer of any sort. You can't to my mind reasonably expect to play them on jailbroken phones either. Why are you even buying iBook books? I can't understand the market proposition to them. Kindle books work o…

As I understand, iBooks lets me highlight and add bookmarks and synchronize these. People read differently, but I'm the kind of person who needs to highlight or use those Post It! bookmarks.

Re: IBooks detects jailbroken iphones

#23

Post by technomancy »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #10
jmillikin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kindle books work on Apple and Amazon hardware, and have a wider selection. Kindle's DRM seems to be a sweet spot: effective enough to prevent casual piracy, but generally not annoying, and easy to bypass for anyone who cares about controlling their own media.

Do you have more info on this? If true, the ability to export to ePub would induce me to buy books in kindle format. [edit: looks like there are some python scripts to do this. http://pastebin.com/f696ea728 This one claims to do the job. ]

> If true, the ability to export to ePub would induce me to buy books in kindle format.

Keep in mind that by doing so you would still be supporting a consumer-hostile ecosystem.

Re: IBooks detects jailbroken iphones

#24

Post by CWuestefeld »

ig1 wrote: post #21
CWuestefeld wrote: post #14

It appears that Apple is throwing caution to the wind and opening themselves up for a slew of lawsuits over… iBooks. Really? Even if a corporation doesn’t like us messing with their perfect OS, they can’t stop us from doing what’s legal. Sigh. Someone else who doesn't understand our rights include the right to enter into a contract that places burdens on both parties. There's no legal or moral reason that Apple can't…

Yes there are. There are plenty of rights which the law gives you which you can't surrender, because they occur in asymmetric situations where one party has more power than the other. For example you can't sell yourself into slavery and you can't surrender your right to reverse engineer a technology (in most developed countries). Anti-competitive practices is another area where the law has intervened in these sort of…

We could have all kinds of debate here.

I assume that we can all agree on the slavery part, but I'm not so sure about the reverse engineering one. Your personal feelings may differ, of course, but I'm having trouble constructing an argument against the signing-away of reverse engineering rights, from basic natural law principles.

Here's another fun example: clearly the right to free speech is fundamental, at least to those in our society. So how is it that a court can uphold, e.g., an NDA?

Re: IBooks detects jailbroken iphones

#25

Post by [deleted] »

jmillikin wrote: post #8
tptacek wrote: post #3

It's hard to muster too much outrage about this. You can't read your "rightfully purchased iBooks" on any other device either; you can't read them on a Kindle, nor, to the best of my knowledge, on an Apple Mac computer of any sort. You can't to my mind reasonably expect to play them on jailbroken phones either. Why are you even buying iBook books? I can't understand the market proposition to them. Kindle books work o…

> Kindle books work on Apple and Amazon hardware, and have a wider selection. Kindle's DRM seems to be a sweet spot: effective enough to prevent casual piracy, but generally not annoying, and easy to bypass for anyone who cares about controlling their own media.

[deleted]

Re: IBooks detects jailbroken iphones

#26

Post by jmillikin »

[deleted] wrote: post #25
jmillikin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kindle books work on Apple and Amazon hardware, and have a wider selection. Kindle's DRM seems to be a sweet spot: effective enough to prevent casual piracy, but generally not annoying, and easy to bypass for anyone who cares about controlling their own media.

[deleted]

According to the Topaz developer[1], it was cracked over a year ago; apparently the Topaz algorithm was, like .azw before it, trivially bypassed by prodding at the KindleForPC application.

Furthermore, Topaz is a rarely-used specialty format. It has existed for at least three years (based on the blog's date and text), but AZW/mobi continues to be by far the dominant format for purchased Kindle books.

[1] http://beesbuzz.biz/blog/e/2010/01/07-interesting_topaz_drm_...

Re: IBooks detects jailbroken iphones

#27

Post by lionhearted »

technomancy wrote: post #23
yummyfajitas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have more info on this? If true, the ability to export to ePub would induce me to buy books in kindle format. [edit: looks like there are some python scripts to do this. http://pastebin.com/f696ea728 This one claims to do the job. ]

> If true, the ability to export to ePub would induce me to buy books in kindle format. Keep in mind that by doing so you would still be supporting a consumer-hostile ecosystem.

> Keep in mind that by doing so you would still be supporting a consumer-hostile ecosystem.

I find Kindle to be a massive upgrade over tangible books for me - I travel, so physical books get gifted away after finishing them, while I get to keep my Kindle books. And they're cheaper.

As a consumer, it's been a huge win for me. Could it be even better than now? Yeah sure probably, but I love paying less for books, getting them instantly, and being able to keep them instead of gifting them on for weight/space reasons.

Re: IBooks detects jailbroken iphones

#28

Post by Tichy »

kmfrk wrote: post #22
tptacek wrote: post #3

It's hard to muster too much outrage about this. You can't read your "rightfully purchased iBooks" on any other device either; you can't read them on a Kindle, nor, to the best of my knowledge, on an Apple Mac computer of any sort. You can't to my mind reasonably expect to play them on jailbroken phones either. Why are you even buying iBook books? I can't understand the market proposition to them. Kindle books work o…

As I understand, iBooks lets me highlight and add bookmarks and synchronize these. People read differently, but I'm the kind of person who needs to highlight or use those Post It! bookmarks.

I am sure you can highlight and synchronize on the kindle. After all, Amazon even publishes a top 10 list of most highlighted passages. (I haven't tried highlighting myself yet).

Re: IBooks detects jailbroken iphones

#29

Post by jhancock »

ajaykam wrote: post #2

this ongoing battle is annoying. I just need my iphone to be a hotspot and I need a better notification system. Then i'll be happy.

Perhaps you'd be happy with a Palm Pre: hotspot..check (and free with Verizon)...possibly world's finest notification system...check.

I had an iPhone for a year and now have used a Palm Pre for a year. I just bought my son an iPod Touch and yuck!! The celebrated UI of iOS is quite a turn off compared to webOS in my opinion.

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