Apple has rejected Sony’s Reader app from the App Store, saying that in-app purchases have to go through Apple. Sony’s Reader sold ebooks in-app, bypassing the App Store, and allowed users to access ebooks they had purchased elsewhere. Other vendors, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Google avoid Apple’s wrath by redirecting users to the web via the iOS browser.
Most likely, what makes Sony’s Reader app different is that it attempted to offer in-app purchases that bypass the App Store natively, instead of redirecting users to a web interface like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Google.
According to Claire Cain Miller and Miguel Helft, writing for the New York Times, “Apple said on Tuesday that it was still allowing customers to read ebooks they bought elsewhere within apps.” But ebook purchases that used to take place in the iOS browser must not take place with in the reader app.
While controversial, this is not a new policy on Apple’s part. It’s the very reason why Amazon’s Kindle app doesn’t have a built-in store and instead redirects the user to the iOS browser. But if what Apple is saying is that users can’t download content that has been purchased outside of the App Store, that is new and different (and would likely put Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Google in the same boat). Section 11.2 of Apple’s iOS developer guidelines is clear:
“Apps utilizing a system other than the In App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality, or services in an app will be rejected.”
Jacqui Cheng, writing for Ars Technica, reports that Apple claims “it has not changed any of its guidelines given to developers, but it indirectly confirms that accessing content purchased elsewhere could be a no-no if that content isn’t also available to be purchased through Apple’s own system.”
What’s changed is that Apple seems to now be requiring that if an iOS app allows the user to make purchases outside the app, the app must also support making purchases in-app, through the App Store. What’s not clear is if Apple requires prices to remain consistent on in-app purchases and those that take place outside of the app. Apple wants not just a cut of ebooks it sells, but a cut of the ebooks sold by its competitors as well. As Jason Snell, writing for Macworld, notes, “It’s clear that Apple is tired of seeing companies make money on content served to iOS devices without using its system or cutting it in for a piece of the action.”
What remains to be seen is if Apple expands this policy to digital artifacts other than ebooks. It’s a safe bet that Apple seems adamant about taking its cut from anything and everything that runs on its iOS devices. What’s really disturbing here is that Apple continues to change the App Store rules midstream.
If Amazon were really smart, it would pull its Kindle app from Apple’s App Store tomorrow and divert development resources to recreating the Kindle experience as an open web application.
Cory Doctorow, writing for BoingBoing, reports that his publisher Tor/Macmillan “approached all the major ebook vendors and asked if they’d carry my books without [digital rights management] DRM. Apple said no, books in its iBook store were required to have DRM, even if the publisher and the author didn’t want it.” Doctorow goes on to write that Apple has also refused requests from Random House to carry his audiobooks without DRM in the App Store.
So much for Apple’s past claims of implementing DRM only because the publishers demand it. When the US Copyright Office ruled last summer that jailbreaking your iPhone was legal for the purpose of accessing unapproved third-party software, Apple was vehement in its opposition to the ruling. Sadly, the ruling does not apply to the iPad.
No vendor or publisher should be surprised by this. Apple’s iOS platform has, since inception, been a walled garden, access to which Apple charges a 30 percent toll. The solution is simple. Sell your “buy once, read everywhere” publications on the open web unencumbered by DRM and give your users instructions on how to move them to their devices. Oh, you want to encumber with DRM? Fine, but don’t bitch about Apple’s access tax.
For those of us users who were stupid enough to believe that Apple would let us use our iOS devices as ebook readers, well, there’s always the web.
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