Why Apple, Why Does it Have to Be Like This? The Cold Cynicism of the iBook EULA

It's hard to wrap my brain around the cold cyn­i­cism of Apple's releas­ing a new tool to democ­ra­tize the pub­lish­ing of eBooks today, only to include in the tool's terms and con­di­tions a pro­hi­bi­tion against sell­ing those books any­where but through Apple's own book­store. There's just some­thing so aching­ly awful about it.

Port­land, Ore­gon iOS devel­op­er Dan Wine­man calls it unpreci­dent­ed audac­i­ty. Writer Ed Bott calls it "mind-bogglingly greedy and evil." I just find it very, very sad.

Here's sec­tion 2b of the End User License Agree­ment of the new iBook Author pro­gram. 

B. Dis­tri­b­u­tion of your Work. As a con­di­tion of this License and pro­vid­ed you are in com­pli­ance with its terms, your Work may be dis­trib­uted as fol­lows:(i) if your Work is pro­vid­ed for free (at no charge), you may dis­trib­ute the Work by any avail­able means; (ii) if your Work is pro­vid­ed for a fee (includ­ing as part of any subscription-based prod­uct or 

ser­vice), you may only dis­trib­ute the Work through Apple and such dis­tri­b­u­tion is sub­ject to the fol­low­ing lim­i­ta­tions and con­di­tions: (a) you will be required to enter into a sep­a­rate writ­ten agree­ment with Apple (or an Apple affil­i­ate or sub­sidiary) before any com­mer­cial dis­tri­b­u­tion of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may deter­mine for any rea­son and in its sole dis­cre­tion not to select your Work for dis­tri­b­u­tion.

The ten­sion between the cre­ative poten­tial enabled by this kind of soft­ware and the crush­ing author­i­tar­i­an­ism of the con­di­tions it's shipped with is remark­able. Pro­fes­sion­al cynic Paul Carrsays that's just how Apple rolls; he says we'll com­plain and then we'll gen­u­flect and then we'll like it.......

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