It’s been at least 20 hours since we posting our last “Apple rejecting apps for no good reason” story so here is another one. In the firing line now are eBooks because “this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing upon third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store.”
There are some valid reasons for this surrounding the use of copyrights and there are T&Cs in place, but some have been rejected when the copyrights are clearly owned. How far will this go? eBook readers can’t surely be removed next can they?
This is all getting rather messy and will of course lead to issues down the line, but I guess all we can do is wait and see how it all pans out. Anyone know when Apple’s own eBook store will appear on iTunes?
The ebook space is in chaos right now, with corporations – including Apple – now thinking there is money to finally be made in this space.
Stanza (my favorite ereader desktop/mobile app pair) has been purchased by Amazon.com.
The company that makes eReader is now owned by Barnes and Noble.
Apple is rumored to be interested in selling ebooks via iTunes, just like they sell music and videos.
I suspect 99% of this current problems lie around the future financial estimates, not any issues of principle.
I would have thought that infringing legal copyright was actually a rather valid reason….if it is right of course.
There’s way too much hysteria and hyperbole surrounding this isssue. The original source for this story is Erica Sadun, a cheerleader for the jailbreaking community who (as usual, it seems to me) takes 2 2 and makes 5 to suit her own agenda.
A statement from Apple clarifies the issue:
“We have not stopped approving ebook readers and ebooks in fact we’ve approved 221 new ebooks to the App Store since 7/30/09. The book category in the App Store lists 6,000 apps. and this doesn’t cover the full scope since ebooks are included in other categories like medical, reference and education.”
Apple are starting to look like a bunch of tossers. “We have not stopped approving ebook readers and ebooks” – since when are books something that Apple (or any company for that matter) needs to ‘approve’?
try the application called “stanza”, it’s very good
otherwise jailbreak and look in the alternative app store