Apple Clarifies iBooks Author EULA, Excludes Claim on Content | Hacker News Reader

Apple Clarifies iBooks Author EULA, Excludes Claim on Content

macobserver.com

45 pointsdavethenerd11 comments

Odd article title. They never made a claim on content. This version of the EULA is more clearly written, but the previous was sufficient.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I have my doubts that will stand in court. At the extreme, consider what would happen if you replaced the ePub route by a zip-bzip2-zip conversion. Surely, the final product would not, technically, be made using iBooks Author, but I doubt that would carry weight in court.

Now, if you manually add in those .ibook elements or create them outside of iBooks Author and then somehow merge them into both your iBook and your final ePub, you would likely be OK, but then, what is the use of using iBooks Author in the first place?

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...

"files in the .ibooks format generated using iBooks Author"

That clause is ambiguous, and I wouldn't bet on it being interpreted in the sense your scheme would depend on.

You'd need "generated using iBooks Author" to denote which "files", where it's more likely to be interpreted as denoting which "format". That is, the clause disambiguates the format from any other format that may exist with the file suffix ".ibook".

ANYway, this EULA update is appreciated.

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