“Apple has updated its iBooks Author app in order to clarify the language of its End User License Agreement,” Matthew Panzarino reports for TNW. “The changes to the EULA clarify that Apple does indeed intend the packaged product to be sold on the iBookstore only, but also makes it clear that it does not lay claim to the content that you use to create the book, nor does it try to limit what you can do with that content elsewhere.”
“This change in wording should make it clear, as many right minded people have assumed, that Apple was never interested in limiting the distribution of content that was not packaged in the .iBooks format,” Panzarino reports. “The wording of the original was taken by some to mean that Apple was trying to exercise its rights on all kinds of content, including universal formats like PDF, not just iBooks.”
Panzarino reports, “The EULA still includes language that indicates users are free to distribute .iBooks formatted documents free of charge by any means they choose, they just can’t charge for them anywhere else.”
Read more in the full article, including before and after EULA comparisons, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
DUH. But good of them to clarify.
Mega-DUH. Apple have never been perfect. But I always find it odd when certain people default to anti-Apple paranoia.
Yeah, Apple’s out to get you. I guess some people require spooky scary satanic monster demons in their lives to keep them interested. 😯
Well who would have thought it ?
It was a fuss about nothing after all !
Oh wait, the headline for this article was apparently wrong. It should read “Apple backs down from draconian play to own all your content. Citizens thank pundits for panicking and bringing it to everybody’s attention.”
😉
Laughing out loud…
NO.
See, you have confused Apple with Google again.
Apple is the one that occasionally makes mistakes and then rectifies them BEFORE there’s any actual harm done.
please note the wink…
As suspected (and over-reacted to).
A little bit more care and thought given to the EULA drafting would not have gone amiss. Writing ambiguous text is far from desirable.
What? Lawyers writing ambiguous text??? Say it ain’t so.
But I’m not bitter. 🙂
There is nothing clear about the standards Apple will use to accept or reject any submitted iBook.
I’d say it’s still very ambiguous.
And arbitrary.
Sorry my reply was ambiguous.
The point I wanted to make was that since Apple doesn’t publish or reveal to end users their standards for selecting or declining an iBook for sale in the iBook Store, it is clear they are intentionally ambiguous.
I have to admit I have not read the entire iBook EULA, but based on what I have, I am presuming from the way it is worded that if an author wants to make money publishing using iBook Author, they have to go through Apple and sell it on the iBook Store.
What if I want to make money using iBook Author and don’t intend to sell my product, but give it away?
What’s in Apple’s EULA about that?
Whatever your thoughts on this issue, one is for certain – Agreements mean what they say and say what they mean. And Apple’s high paid lawyers screwed the pooch on this one up when they wrote the initial iBooks Author EULA. Glad to see they corrected their error!
Samsung and Microsloth, on a race to the bottom. Free entertainment for us.
OOps! wrong thread. 😮