
Apple Clarifies iBooks Author EULA, Excludes Claim on Content - davethenerd
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple_clarifies_ibooks_author_eula_excludes_claim_on_content/
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jws
Odd article title. They never made a claim on content. This version of the
EULA is more clearly written, but the previous was sufficient.

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furyofantares
I don't see what's odd about the article title. It says they clarified the
EULA. People misread the original as if it made a claim on content, so the new
EULA clarifies that this is not the case.

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stephen_g
The "Excludes Claim on Content" part of the title implies that there was a
claim on content before...

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furyofantares
It implies that an exclusion wasn't present before, which is true. The EULA
previously did not include a claim on content, but people were misreading it
that way. So, as a point of clarification, they changed it to explicitly
exclude a claim on content.

I see how you are reading "excludes a claim on content" as meaning a claim on
content was removed. But what it actually means is that an exclusion of a
claim on content was added.

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robomartin
The bigger question in my mind is: Why use the Apple authoring tool in the
first place?

Writing a book is a lot of work. It is a huge investment in time and money. I
would think that it would be far smarter to author it using a tool that allows
output in a myriad of formats. And, yes, one of those formats could be ibook,
but not the only one.

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eridius
Sure, if you want static content on multiple platforms. But the iBooks Author
tool enables interactive content that no other platform provides.

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kennywinker
So if someone built an .ibooks to epub converter, that would be fine? It
sounds like it from the language they use... all they care about is that
.ibooks can only be sold through their store.

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ghshephard
From Section 2.B.ii - " this restriction will not apply to the content of the
work when distributed in a form that does not include files in the .ibooks
format generated using iBooks Author. "

So This restriction not apply to anything distributed in a form that does not
include files in the ibooks format. Given that .epub is not the .ibooks
format, you are correct.

More interesting, is the caveat, "generated using the iBooks Author" - what
this means is that .ibooks generated with other authors can be sold in places
other than the Apple Store. Start your timer as to how soon we'll see other
authoring tools for .ibook format (with the target market being the book
publishers, who will be able to bypass the apple book store)

Most interesting scenario of all:

    
    
      o Generate .iBook using iBooks author.
      o Convert to .epub  using an epub converter.
      o Convert back to .ibooks using a third party tool (and, theoretically, 
        adding back in the custom .ibook elements)
    

The end result is _not_ generated using the ibooks author, and is also not
subject to the iBookStore restrictions.

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kennywinker
This seems unlikely. iBooks is not a thriving market right now, and Apple is
trying to make it one by creating cool tools for making better content (iBooks
Author). There are already people working on creating competing authoring
tools, but their stated goal is to publish to a more standards-oriented format
like .epub, not to generate .ibook files that can be sold outside the
iBookstore.

A tool that can publish the same content to .ibook and .epub would be useful,
but not because there is a market for .ibook files outside of Apple's. What's
the point of that? Theoretically .epub can do everything .ibook can do:

> So I’ve yet to see anything in here which couldn’t be output nicely using
> ePub3. - [http://alanquatermain.me/post/16179111286/ibooks-author-
> vs-e...](http://alanquatermain.me/post/16179111286/ibooks-author-vs-epub-
> author)

