The new iBook licensing agreement means that content that you create in the software is de facto owned by Apple because you cannot sell it anywhere except through Apple marketing outlets. And if they reject it, you cannot sell it to anybody else, either. In other words, if you create in the software, you become a sort of indentured servant to Apple. It’s as if Microsoft said that content created in Word was owned by them and could only be distrubuted through outlets they controlled. It is EXACTLY the same thing and mark my words, the entire software industry will sieze on this.
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WE ARE ONE. WE ARE LEGION. WE
WE ARE ONE. WE ARE LEGION. WE ARE ARISEN-S!
Five years ago I would have
Five years ago I would have said this would not stand up to legal review, but who knows anymore. Intellectual Property protection is in a bad way, as the laws governing it date from eras when the British Crown established “privileges”, or private laws, such as royal patents to do this or that, letters of marque, and commercial protections, such as the worst of all, the corporation. That’s why the check is called a “royalty”. In recent years libertarians (among others) have written out against these practices.
The original Word was a clone of an editor created by the long-gone Digital Research; PC-DOS was a clone of CP/M-86 from the same company. Since virtually all programming is iterative [save by mathematicians :)] software patent law does not handle IP issues well. But Apple’s claim is bizarre. You would think that a business model that called for preventing use of your product was a loser, but companies are addicted to proprietary methods and gratuitous barriers to market entry.
Nice to have an informed
Nice to have an informed opinion, msml. Thanks. It’s why I only use Linux, only open source software.
Guess it’s time to break out
Guess it’s time to break out your old ROYAL typewriter huh? Good enough for Hemingway , then it’s good enough for today’s writer. They seem to forget that all we need to do is unplug these devices…
Right on James. and where
Right on James. and where will they be when the power goes off, eh?
Sounds to me like Apple
Sounds to me like Apple doesn’t want to stay in the business very long, if they give content creators a raw deal like that. I can’t see there being no competitor out there who sees the light on that one.
Oh, now this really gives me
Oh, now this really gives me incentive to be creative. What?? I see myself bouncing like a rubber ball from one device to another, a robot reader with no brain synapses, a dead brain unable to receive creative impulse. Why encourage people to invent things? Apple’s arse should be in court. Oh, excuse me. I forget: A corp isn’t a person unless the legal or marketing team wants it to be. You can have your iPad and eat it too.
Peace.
Peace.
Just another form of
Just another form of censorship…as a former librarian, I am against all censorship which comes in many subtle and less subtle forms…control of information, not going to happen, not as long as we do not allow it as consumers.
We can impact these kinds of
We can impact these kinds of decisions by retreating from addiction to electronic media, you know. They only have this kind of control when we let them have it.
Hate Apple – always been a
Hate Apple – always been a “Gates girl” LOL.
Never bought an Apple
Never bought an Apple product, never will. What kind of a name is Apple for a computer device anyway? Never trusted them. At least Microsoft doesn’t pretend to be anything but what it is–a stuffy gray corporation.
Here’s where a lot of that
Here’s where a lot of that article is biased. They state: “Apple, in this EULA, is claiming a right not just to its software, but to its software’s output. It’s akin to Microsoft trying to restrict what people can do with Word documents, or Adobe declaring that if you use Photoshop to export a JPEG, you can’t freely sell it to Getty. As far as I know, in the consumer software industry, this practice is unprecedented.”
So let’s get this straight, shall we? Apple is saying that the *file format* created by their software is proprietary. Not the book. And they make the only viewer for it. So if you create a book with their software you can’t use it on a Kindle. That’s what that is saying. The guy writing the article is trying to get hits to the website.
Likewise, Microsoft does indeed control the .doc and .docx format. They try their hardest to prevent people from making software that use that format. They will not give any information on it, and projects like Open Office had to reverse engineer it.
Another example, you can use various different applications to create a .gif file. The gif format, “graphic interchange format” was introduced by CompuServe in 1987. They owned it. GIF images use LZW compression, which was patented and owned by Unisys. If you wanted to include the GIF format, or LZW compression in a product, you had to pay a licensing fee. Likewise with the TIFF format used by Photoshop. Same thing is true of the MP3 format. Owned by Fraunhofer IIS.
On the other hand Apple’s AAC audio compression format, which is now a standardized format, is totally free to use. Apple also releases a lot of code to the open source community, and Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD. Improvements they make are released, as well as frameworks like WebKit, which is used by Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and the default web browser in the iOS, Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS and webOS mobile operating systems. And also the Amazon Kindle. Does this sound like Apple is trying to be controlling? WebKit is open source. They created it and gave it to the world, and their competitors.
As far as an evil corporation, look no further than Microsoft. Gates stole CP/M-86 and made it IBM-DOS. Then he stole it from IBM and made it MS-DOS. Then when Compaq reverse engineered IBMs BIOS and made the first IBM compatible computers (against IBMs wishes), who was there to license them an operating system? That was paid for by IBM? This also happened with OS/2 which became Windows NT, and then IBM had enough of Microsoft. The guy that ran Digital Research was one of Gates friends, and later commented suicide. Gates also stole things like Apple’s QuickTime code to use for Video for Windows. He licensed parts of the Mac operating system to use for Windows 1, and was supposed to stop after that, but didn’t. Most of their famous products are stolen, bought or borrowed.
A good example of that is Internet Explorer. When MS was slipping behind in the web browser scene, they went to SpyGlass, and used the code for the Mosaic browser (which is also the source for Netscape). Microsoft licensed Spyglass Mosaic for a quarterly fee plus a percentage of Microsoft’s non-Windows revenues for the software. However, they then gave it away for free, and said they didn’t have to pay SpyGlass anything.
Then you have the fact that PC makers cannot include open source software on their machines and still retain their Microsoft license. So they have to pay MS $$ for every PC sold even if it has Linux installed on it. Now who is the evil company?
Apple is a very creative company. Creative people use Macs. Even Microsoft use Macs. As far as the name Apple? Try Isaac Newton. What’s “Microsoft”? Small and flaccid? 😉 I work in the graphics and audio industry, and it’s all Macs. All those magazines you read, and CDs you listen to. Why? It’s a better operating system than Windows will ever be.
While I might not agree with everything Apple does, look at their market. MP3 payers? iPods are #1. Smart phones? iPhones are #1. Tablets? There is no tablet market, but there is an iPad market. Why is this? Because their products are that good. Where is the Zune? How about all the junk tablet on the market? MS is *paying* sales people to push Windows 7 phones on buyers because no one wants to buy them!