

Apple's mind-bogglingly greedy and evil license agreement - ot
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/apples-mind-bogglingly-greedy-and-evil-license-agreement/4360?tag=nl.e539&h=1

======
Jayasimhan
MS Office comparison is weak. You pay for MS Office to own the output. iBooks
Author is free. You pay Apple only when you produce something out of it and
sell it for profit. It is absurd to expect proprietary software to be free.

Based on the past and recent history [think of all the products that Google
shutdown recently], it sounds to me that it is much reliable for users,
especially if you are going to put your career into it, that the company
developing the software is making money from it.

------
damoncali
An important detail:

"Updated to add: By “it,” I am referring to the book, not the content. The
program allows you to export your work as plain text, with all formatting
stripped. So you do have the option to take the formatting work you did in
iBooks Author, throw it away, and start over."

This is about format, not content. Nothing to see here.

------
thefre
The problem is the combination of this evil clause and Apple's general
attitude and evilness.

First on the EULA: even if you used a program to do a formatting, said
formatting is still your work, and the EULA recognize that by using the term
work, so Apple is basically saying: if you use our "free" tool you have to
give us a part of your work. So how exactly is that free? i don't know.

Then what happens if you use something else to do the formatting then just
convert using Apple program (if that is possible)? Or if you can't convert
redo exactly the same formatting, or something really near. Apple risk to
argue that you breached the agreement even if you technically might not have.

And then what happens if they recognize that you used another tool to publish
on other platform, but the too version are still too close to their taste?
That's when Apple's general attitude and evilness will enter the game. They
will say: I don't publish you, and I don't have to give any reason for that.
You might say, yeah it is the game, it is their right. Except two things: the
kind of people who object that typically also fake a taste for liberalism and
free markets and so on (they are more probably thinking about something
anarcho-capitalism style and how it could be great to make a lot of money
fucking people all around you just because you can). I recognize that given
the current laws, it is not obvious that Apple's don't have the right to do
that, they even might have. But I found this way of doing business highly
disgusting. The second thing is that a numerical publisher in Apple style has
nothing in common with a real publisher. Their marginal cost for publishing
you is absurdly low, their margins guaranteed, and they don't help you with
you work (well yeah they kind of help you by "giving" you a program, ok in
that case i suppose buying a fancy pen gives the builder some right on the
story you wrote with? -- in any case this "help" as nothing in common with the
help of a real publisher).

It all can be summarized with: Apple is constructing a giant monopolistic
market, because well it is obvious that monopolies works and brings an absurd
amount of money. And now every other giant multinationals find how brilliant
this is and are trying to do the same, even for PC. They might even say it is
not monopolies because they are multiple of those, and if they turn their
sentence to say that "well" people might even believe them.

If this is the kind of world you want and like to live in, good for you. On my
side, it makes me vomit.

------
antalbud
I don't really see the problem. This is not a word processor, this is - as the
name suggests - a software which lets you create interactive eBooks in a
proprietary format which is only compatible with the iPad.

It is its sole purpose.

Apple as a publisher provides you this software for free specifically to help
you publish on their own store. And they restrict you to use it only for that.
They don't own your content.

You can create ePub documents with Pages (for example), which are readable
with any ebook reader, and you are not limited in any way in how you choose to
distribute them.

I don't think this is comparable to restricting the use of a Word or PDF
document.

------
technoslut
I don't think this is about the potential worst that can happen.

My guess:

Apple is betting that the tablet is the future of the PC. Apple is also
betting that hardware prices will crater like the PC did. The future is about
services and less about hardware and the iPad will get cheaper over time.
Apple wants to guarantee their 30% cut on publishers, devs, etc. while making
it difficult to port it over to other platforms.

I think it's wrong in believing this may have to do with lawyers. I think this
is Apple's intent so they can close up any potential loopholes that would give
a competitor an equal ground. Apple may not have to do this anyway since
Android will probably not be the favored OS to use in education but Apple
wants the guarantee.

------
bwooce
Sheesh, that's an emotive title.

The only end to this noise that I can see is that Apple will supply an update
that removes the .epub capability, making the tool specific to iBooks.

Will we be any poorer for that? It's like having a machine that prints money -
you could use it...but you're likely to get into trouble if you do.

------
sigzero
That is a mind-bogglingly stupid headline. Give me a break.

------
zerostar07
There's no implication that you give up your copyrights to apple. They won't
allow you to sell iBooks elsewhere, that's it. It's not exactly pro-open
market but that's Apple: musicians and app developers already knuckle under.

The real disturbing part is this: Apple censors worse than China, and books
tend to be provocative, a lot more than music or apps. They essentially want
to act as a publisher too, but without taking any risks on the part of
authors. I sincerely hope for good literature that ibooks ends to be a flop.

In any case the problem will be solved with 3rd party tools that take an iBook
and convert it to (swf|html|exe) that people can sell anywhere they want.
Surely apple cannot claim that the output of a conversion program belongs to
them as well. Although it would be interesting to see how they react when the
first ibook-to-iOS App converter appears.

~~~
technoslut
> The real disturbing part is this: Apple censors worse than China, and books
> tend to be provocative, a lot more than music or apps. They essentially want
> to act as a publisher too, but without taking any risks on the part of
> authors.

The rules may stipulate this but I don't think it's Apple's intent. If that
was their intent they would never have control of the music and movie
marketplace. Yes, certain books have been previously banned from apps but that
was more about engineers not getting fired.

The app store model is still fairly new and Apple is still learning, even with
books that existed 1,000 years ago.

I think they want to be open while protecting kids. That is a very fine line.

------
J3L2404
For some reason a large number of people on this site become 'non copus
mentis' in regards to Apple, and fall for absurd claims, eagerly swallowing
ZDnet tripe.

The whole tone of HN floundering.

If your hoping for Apple to fail you have my sympathies. It is only going to
get much, much worse.

------
martingordon
I don't know if it costs anything to sell a book in the iBookstore, but to
sell on the App Store, one needs to pay the $99 annual program fee.

Suppose there is an annual fee to join the iBookstore. Would there be a
different reaction to this EULA if Author was hidden behind that "paywall"? Or
what if Apple just charged $99 for this app instead of making it free?

The reason everyone is so upset about the EULA is that Apple filled a huge
void in the eBook creation software market and Apple filled that void but is
rightfully limiting the tool for their own benefit. Everyone was hoping Apple
would swoop in an create an awesome tool for making eBooks, but instead they
made an awesome tool for making iBooks. Are non-iBook creators worse off today
than they were a week ago? Nope.

A better solution (from a PR standpoint, not from a technical standpoint)
would have been for Apple to make Author output a proprietary format. After
all, no one is crying out because Xcode can't produce Android binaries or
standards-compliant webpages. Still, an open format is the best solution for
this type of product. You don't want authors having to learn how to
cryptographically sign their books or be able to generate ad hoc builds just
to get a book to a student. Apple is enforcing DRM at the EULA level rather
than at the technical level.

~~~
RandallBrown
doesn't iBooks Author output a proprietary format still? It may be based on
ePub but I thought it was still only readable by iBooks.

------
johnpowell
Why do they add the option to save as PDF if they want to lock you in to their
store?

It is easy to export as PDF. You lose some of the pretty stuff but it does
work. <http://i.imgur.com/cy8g2.jpg>

~~~
matwood
And based on my reading of the terms, you're likely free to sell that PDF
anywhere you want (and likely the standard epub output also). What it looks
like is Apple took the epub3 format and added some simple modifications to
make it do the iBooks interactivity. Those modifications is what they don't
want other stores selling, ie a Kindle update that works with Apples iBook
format.

My guess is there will be some clarification from Apple if there hasn't been
already.

------
napierzaza
This is just new people seeing the agreement. The point where he starts
yelling about the fact that he might not be allowed into the store was a big
indicator. A little research will show you what you can get away with.

The rest just sounds like Apple might mean the actual compiled digital book is
their property. Not the actual internal content, but the functional storage
and execution of it. They're trying to keep people from cloning a iBook
reader, not trying to lock down the author's work. Indeed not clear and not
easy to make clear.

------
extension
I can't imagine them defining "Work" so vaguely if they were trying to write a
clear contract. More likely Apple wants to wait and let the courts decide how
much they can get away with. God knows how that will turn out. I guess either
the license will be ruled invalid or some ludicrous precedent will be set.

I can't think of any sensible way to decide whether or not data was "generated
by" a piece of software. If you export your book to plain text, is that not
"generated by" the app? Why not? It's the app's output. But it's also your own
copyrighted work in a more or less rudimentary form.

Imagine you first write your book in Apple's app and save it to an iBook file
that falls under Apple's restrictions. Then you retype your entire book in a
3rd party app that can export iBooks perfectly. The 3rd party generated iBook
is bit-for-bit identical to Apple's. Now you have "two" files that are subject
to different licenses, except of course they are the same file.

That's already absurd. But what if instead of retyping your book, you just
import it into the 3rd party app from the Apple generated iBook file. You
should be able to do that, right? Surely the legal status of the data can't
depend on whether or not you typed it by hand. But again, this is absurd
because you are importing and exporting to the same format. It optimizes to a
file copy.

And this isn't a reductionist argument. The above is an entirely realistic
scenario that will inevitably come up whenever an iBook author wants to sell
their book outside of Apple's store.

~~~
daniel02216
This interesting article ("What Colour are your bits?") goes in depth on some
of the reasons that different licenses on the same bits can happen:
<http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23>

------
maukdaddy
I think it's time to block zdnet content on HN.

~~~
rickmb
I'm not in favor of banning (see Gruber discussions), but it does worry me
that there are HN-ers that use ZDnet as a source of information. Let's please
stop giving these dinosaurs any more traffic and hope they die soon.

------
ddewit
It's amazing that Apple thinks they can get away with this. What they offer is
far from special. I'm glad I'm part of Exvo where we'll launch our Books app
soon and do away with these crappy business proposition.

~~~
batista
Nice to hear from someone without vested interests in this ebooks thing.

Now, about that "what they offer is far from special" line. Are you serious?
If what they offer is far from special, how come nobody else offers something
like it?

Have you seen how Lulu proposes you format your books? Have you seen any
Amazon kindle book maker? Have you seen the Blurb photo books app? Not even
close.

Also, there's nothing amazing that "Apple thinks can get away with". What the
said is only:

1) Here's our huge store with a market of 50 million devices.

2) Here's the reading program we have made for them.

3) Here's a free app to format your book content.

4) IF you want to sell something _you have formatted and exported_ from our
app, you have to sell it through out store, and we get 70%.

This would be reasonable _even_ if the app (3) was paid for.

Actually, in that case, it would be like the "iOS membership program"'s $100.

~~~
xenophanes
should be "and we get 30%" -- you have a typo

~~~
batista
Yep, sorry.

And it could even stated as:

and we get 30% --compared to 95% to 80% traditional publishers get from you.

------
jws
TL;DR; Tempest in a teapot.

The author missed the definition of "Work" until after they published the
article. "Work" is clearly defined in the EULA as the output of the Apple
software.

The Apple software in question is the last encoding step in a workflow to
publish iBooks. If you aren't publishing an iBook, use a different tool for
that last step.

~~~
mikeash
Where is that clear definition of "Work"?

~~~
m_eiman
"If you charge a fee for any book or other work you generate using this
software (a “Work”)"

Second paragraph of the EULA. Unless my English is bad, that defines a "Work",
capital W, to be the generated output of the software.

~~~
mikeash
That's just an informational note. It does not appear to carry any legal
weight, but is just a tl;dr for what they think is an important clause.

~~~
m_eiman
The license is the entire document, not selected bits and pieces of it.

~~~
mikeash
But does that piece determine the meaning of the word for the entire rest of
the document?

------
culturestate
I'll be honest, I don't understand this uproar. Apple isn't marketing iBooks
Author as a general-purpose eBook publishing tool, they're providing it _for
free_ for the _express purpose_ of publishing to their platform. This is how
they describe it on their website:

"iBooks Author is an amazing new app that allows anyone to create beautiful
Multi-Touch textbooks — and just about any other kind of book — for iPad."

That's why every comparison between iBooks Author and Office or Photoshop or
3DS Max or any other creative application rings so disingenuous in my mind.
They're not even restricting distribution outside of their platform, they just
don't want you making money from it. What evilness am I missing?

~~~
mrich
They are using their dominance in the tablet market to own another market,
exclusively on their terms. Similiar to what Microsoft did when bundling IE
with Windows. I would not be surprised to see an antitrust case against Apple
in the near future.

~~~
batista
Only you can read Kindle books on the iPad with the Kindle app, also with the
Stanza app and tons of others. Also plain ole PDFs with the built-in viewer.

And iBooks is not bundled, you have to download it.

And even if it was, bundling IE was not what got MS in trouble in respect to
antitrust laws. It was things like pushing computer makers in under the table
deals and such.

Actually lots of programs are built-in to any modern OS, from browsers to ftp
to pdf viewer to text editors. Nothing anti-trust about it.

~~~
nirvdrum
Others can do it because they don't have a monopoly. Windows still must be
distributed without its media player in Europe.

And Apple already tried to abuse its position with the Kindle app by forcing a
distribution commission for books it didn't sell. Also a guaranteed lowest
sales price. They've hardly been kind to competition on their platform.

~~~
batista
"""And Apple already tried to abuse its position with the Kindle app by
forcing a distribution commission for books it didn't sell."""

Well, regarding Apple forcing Amazon to play a distribution commissions for
books sold through the iPad, it was either that, or allowing other companies a
free ride to sell on Apple's platform, the Apple spend tons of R&D on, without
Apple getting anything.

Apple puts those restrictions because it considers not just the hardware of
the iPhone, but also the App Store as a platform that it have invested money,
engineering and infrastructure in, and wants to profit from it too. Apple
doesn't believe in the old mantra "apple only makes profit from the hardware".
With multi-billion app/song/book/etc sales, why should they?

Allowing others to sell stuff in your platform without paying you makes sense
if your platform is an operating system.

It _does not_ make sense if your platform is an application market.

Now, regarding "being kind to competition on their platform", indeed they have
been not. But they would have been foolish to be. They invest in building a
game changing phone device, then a game changing app store AND a game changing
mobile platform, why would they invite competition in their own platform? Let
competition exist between multiple platforms.

------
patio11
This seems to be a misreading. My read is "If you sell the output of this, you
grant us exclusivity. If you breach exclusivity, we have a variety of options
in dealing with you, including refusing to carry your work on our platform.
_In the event we do this_ we don't owe you anything even if you think it sure
would have been a swell thing if we had distributed through our platform and
are inclined to sue us over the imputed lost revenue."

Exclusivity is still a very cruddy contractual term for authors, if viewed
against the universe of "all possible contractual arrangements", but it is far
from uncommon in the publishing world. I mean, everyone is pretty much in the
business of exclusive distribution towards channels they control. If you sign
with a dead-tree publisher, they're going to want exclusive rights to be your
only dead-tree publisher in a geographic, cultural, or linguistic territory,
even if you could get someone else to kill trees on your behalf and double
your sales that way.

You'd have to weigh access to the Apple megaphone versus the sales you could
be making through other platforms/channels. If I were (hypothetically) going
to get into ebook publishing, I'd take note that Amazon is _much_ more
generous (off the top of my head standard Kindle publishing requires no
exclusivity and one of their programs wants just a 90 day exclusivity window
for e-publishing). This would allow you to simultaneously sell through e.g.
your own site to a pre-existing fanbase and avoid the 30% (or whatever) rake,
or do things like "Hiya I'm the author of five novels and counting in this
sci-fi universe I created. The first one is $0.99 on Amazon or totally free if
you sign up for my email list."

~~~
hristov
In the publishing world an author provides exclusivity in exchange to
something. Usually the author gets some type of advance and the commitment
from the publisher to publish and market the book.

Here you are supposed to give up commercial exclusivity merely for the ability
to use a piece of software. And there really isn't anything special or
expensive about that software either, there are plenty of free ebook creation
software options.

Furthermore, in the usual publishing contract if the publisher that has
exclusivity declines to publish something, the author can usually shop the
work to other publishers. Not here. Here apparently if Apple says no, you are
pretty much screwed, you cannot sell your work anywhere.

And by the way, I do not think that the original article authors are
misreading anything. The agreement says:

"Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select
your Work for distribution"

This means they can refuse distribution for any reason, and you do not need to
do anything wrong to be refused. And of course if they refuse you do not have
the right to sell your work anywhere else.

~~~
batista
_Here you are supposed to give up commercial exclusivity merely for the
ability to use a piece of software. And there really isn't anything special or
expensive about that software either, there are plenty of free ebook creation
software options_.

Then USE THOSE. The only exclusivity you give is of the file output you made
with that software.

Not of your literary work itself.

~~~
clavalle
Unfortunately, that depends on the definition of 'Work' in this context which
is far from clear.

