Quote:
Originally Posted by bill_mchale
In contrast, Apple may not pull Apps, but they have been decidedly Big Brotherish with respect to the Apps they let people sell 0(and with no clearly stated policy either). I am not convinced they wouldn't do the same thing with their book store.
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Apple definitely hasn't been forthcoming with their app store rules. But I think a better comparison would be their sales of content like music and movies from iTunes. I don't purchase lossy forms of music so I don't use their store and am not aware if they've had any content limited in the past. I know you cannot copy music
from your iPod
to your computer without a 3rd Party program (and then there was the silliness about ringtones costing extra for songs you already purchased when the iPhone first came out).
The overall tone, though, is that digital content being
fully controlled by the content providers alone is a terrible idea all around. If they sell me something, I should be able to use it for
myself or loan it (at which time I don't have access to it, like a regular book). Microsoft Office has a good solution. I installed my one purchased copy on all my computers, but it checks the LAN to see if anyone is using it when I want to. If so, it tells me and doesn't start until I quit the other person's running program. This emulates "loaning" pretty well. But how do you do that with books -- and
eliminate DRM!! -- I don't know.
Obviously this is a can of worms with no easy solution, one that publishers and providers and users like, but there it is.
-Pie