As a photographer and an e-book author, I'm very interested in protecting my intellectual property rights. I'll bet more than a few of you are also interested in protecting your work.Two pieces of legislation, SOPA and PIPA, were introduced in the House and the Senate (respectively) which, if enacted into law, would give the government the unprecedented (and, IMO, unconstitutional) ability to attempt to act as some sort of global copyright police for huge corporations. The big losers if these bills became laws, of course, would be American internet users. Fortunately, outrage by internet sites and users alike caused these two pieces of legislation to do down in flames.
None of that, of course, means that corporations can't try to extend their rights in ways which are, in a nutshell, mind bogglingly greedy and evil. Case in point: Apple's iAuthor.
I'm not an award-winning technology writer. But a guy who is one recently reviewed the license agreement Apple has come up with for their iAuthor software and the words, "mind bogglingly greedy and evil," are his, not mine. (Although I 100% agree with his words.) To get a fix on what Apple claims are it's rights for using their software, CLICK HERE.
My mother would say Apple is "nervy" with their license agreement for this software. That's a nice way of saying they've over-stepped what most anyone (except them, it seems) would consider reasonable and appropriate.
The pretty girl at the top is Nautica. Yikes! I shot this about 5 years ago. Time flies!
1 comment:
It doesn't surprise me that the user agreements are getting more restrictive. I think that there are two reasons for this. First is risk aversion. I suspect that the lawyers are trying to make the user assume as much risk as possible in order to reduce the manufacturer's exposure. The second reason is that almost no one reads the user agreements.
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