Apple Ordered to Pay Chinese Writers in eBook Settlement

[mrsir2009]

Originally Posted by otherjobs

And everybody will have their own car for free, while I bought it for money!

Image

But in five, ten, twenty years... The public will still expect new, more advanced cars, won't they? And who's going to build and manafacture them for free?

[firewood]

Originally Posted by AppleMacFinder

Piracy is the equivalent of stealing a car that duplicates itself when it gets stolen.

Which, if it started to happen to computer and car companies when PCs first came out, would have stopped these companies from investing in new designs (why spend billions in R&D when they would only sell one car, which would then get duplicated). So have fun duplicating some 30 year old PC or car in your world, instead of having the new one you have now.

Idiot thief (from your own kid's future products).

[firewood]

Originally Posted by AppleMacFinder

All my students got their degrees with the help of pirated software.

Various gangsters, mobsters, war lords, and people like Bernie Madoff have also contributed to charities that build hospitals and pay for medical student scholarships. I'm sure that justifies their all activities, and you would want more people to emulate them.

[Saladinos]

So by that logic, Google could be sued to the grave over Youtube in China.

... do they allow Youtube in China?

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Originally Posted by mrsir2009

But in five, ten, twenty years... The public will still expect new, more advanced cars, won't they? And who's going to build and manafacture them for free?

Technically it could work if all the workers needs were also provided for free. Are you telling me motivation to succeed would stop if there was equality? I don't believe that.

The problem is that you'd need the whole world (or at least the majority of it) to be part of it. You can't be a communist island interfacing with a world of capitalists.

Luckily, Marx saw communism not as a political ideology spouted by a few, but a historical inevitability that would spontaneously embraced by the masses of the world.

The huge anti-capitalist feeling right now tends to support that. The invention of the stock market might have delayed its onset, but people are becoming ever more aware of just how exploited they are.

[Saladinos]

Originally Posted by mw360

Would it be right for him to manufacture counterfeit patented drugs? Yes of course! Except, no, because that devalues those drugs, jeopardising the drug company's revenue and threatening future research. At the very least, the availability of free versions, constricts the available market for the legitimate version, causing the producers to increase the price to cover the fixed cost of development. If you encourage counterfeiting your ultimate scenarios are either a two tier system, where some doctors have unlimited free drugs, and some have constrained expensive drugs, which is horribly unfair on patients, or a utopian free-for-all followed by a rapid collapse in the development of new treatments. If one or two guys quietly do this without a fuss, the end scenarios are unlikely to come true, although harm is still done. If people on the Internet, reaching audiences of millions actually vociferously advocate this kind of thing, then what's the stop it ending every badly for us all?

Don't even try to defend the pharmaceutical industry. It's a despicable trade whose business-people deserve nothing less than damnation.

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by theelysium

I do agree with you the max they should get is the 70% split of the sold work, if any compensation at all is received.

In that case you got me completely wrong. The minimum they should get is the 70% split, because that is what every copyright holder gets paid by Apple. But that minimum could be increased for at least two reasons:

1. Apple has no valid contract that says Apple can keep 30%.

2. It is obvious that sales of eBooks will reduce sales of the printed book (and sales through Apple will reduce sales through Amazon and so on) to some degree, and the more eBooks you sell through Apple, the more sales you will lose elsewhere. It is also obvious that by offering a lower price you will make more sales, and there will be some price point that gives maximum profit. The copyright holder will set the price not to maximize the profit from eBooks sold through Apple, but the total profit. The scammer, on the other hand, doesn't care about profits from other sources. So the price set by the scammer will usually damage the total profits of the copyright holder from all sources. Imagine a scammer puts Microsoft Office on the app store and sells it for $5. Millions buy a copy. Do you think Microsoft would be happy if Apple pays them $3.50 or $5 per copy?

[Saladinos]

Originally Posted by mw360

Don't be stupid, Apple pays out for this, then sues whoever submitted the apps/books for compensation. Simple legal processes taking place. Apple probably aren't troubled by this at all.

It sets a dangerous precedent. It means Apple are liable for the content on the store. That might be potentially workable since Apple approves all the content on the stores, but it exposes them to potentially huge damages should somebody upload something the reviewer doesn't immediately recognise as an infringement of somebody's IP.

There are decades of enforceable IP registered all over the world. It includes books and songs and movies and more, in every country those are protected. On the other hand, Apple can only realistically have so many reviewers.

The real danger here is to Google, who don't have an approval mechanism. There's a huge amount of IP infringement on the Play store.

The way Google tackles this at the moment is the same way they do with Youtube (see Viacom vs Youtube) - copyright holders have to notify the company and it will take the offending content down, but it isn't liable for any actual infringement that occurred. The case has had a bit of a back-and-forth, but most of the modern internet depends on that ruling essentially staying.

[MacinDoc]

Originally Posted by AppleMacFinder

Piracy is the equivalent of stealing a car that duplicates itself when it gets stolen.
And now there are two cars. The horror.

And if a company spends $500 million designing, developing and building that car, and after one person buys that car, and everyone else steals their own copy, how does the car builder get its money back for the design and production of that car? Pirating intellectual material may not deprive the owner of the material, but it does deprive the owner of the potential market for that material. Similarly, if everyone pirated books, then authors would make no money writing them, and before you know it, nobody would be writing books any more.

[MacinDoc]

Originally Posted by Saladinos

It sets a dangerous precedent. It means Apple are liable for the content on the store. That might be potentially workable since Apple approves all the content on the stores, but it exposes them to potentially huge damages should somebody upload something the reviewer doesn't immediately recognise as an infringement of somebody's IP.

There are decades of enforceable IP registered all over the world. It includes books and songs and movies and more, in every country those are protected. On the other hand, Apple can only realistically have so many reviewers.

The real danger here is to Google, who don't have an approval mechanism. There's a huge amount of IP infringement on the Play store.

The way Google tackles this at the moment is the same way they do with Youtube (see Viacom vs Youtube) - copyright holders have to notify the company and it will take the offending content down, but it isn't liable for any actual infringement that occurred. The case has had a bit of a back-and-forth, but most of the modern internet depends on that ruling essentially staying.

The biggest risk revolves around Apple being sued not for the content of the store, but for what that content was used for. Since everyone on this forum (well, at least one or two of you) loves car analogies, this is a bit like suing Chevrolet because one of its vehicles was used to commit a crime. Or a more precise analogy would be suing Amazon because the content of a book it sold contained material that its author had stolen from someone else's book.

[Cartaphilus]

There is nothing unreasonable about a legal system that makes the retailer responsible without fault for infringement by the goods he sells. The retailer is most often easier to find, is more often solvent, and the retailer will have an incentive to impose an indemnification agreement with his suppliers, secured by insurance, a bond, a holdback, or a third-party escrow of the payments due the supplier. A viable economic arrangement would likely evolve to balance the equities.

And, of course, enterprises which can't or won't adapt to Chinese law are perfectly free to avoid doing business there. I'm sure the rules were explained by competent local counsel to Apple's lawyers and managers who could do math. The profits offered by the enormous Chinese market dwarf the occasional cost of patching it up with some holder of IP rights.

Frankly, I have much more respect for Chinese legal system than for the people posting their blanket disdain for intellectual property rights. I'm hoping, and suspecting, that they're mostly just kids who were raised by wolves. Eventually they will understand that people have rights enforced by society as a whole not only to foster invention, but to prevent thieves from being hunted down by victims who are more likely to impose more than a fine and a stern talking to. There are plenty of countries where IP rights are ignored; every one of them suffers from poverty, lack of technology, and either an unstable or a dictatorial government--sometimes both. In their defense, though, I understand they have cheap beer.

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by Saladinos

It sets a dangerous precedent. It means Apple are liable for the content on the store. That might be potentially workable since Apple approves all the content on the stores, but it exposes them to potentially huge damages should somebody upload something the reviewer doesn't immediately recognise as an infringement of somebody's IP.

There are two ways to fix this: One is by not having excessive penalties or having no penalties at all - in this case it is clear that Apple had not intended to infringe anyone's copyright but was tricked into doing so. Penalties should only be applied to the scammers who submitted someone else's work. The other is for Apple (or anyone in a similar position) to make sure that they know who they are dealing with, so if anything goes wrong they have someone to take to court as well.

[Saladinos]

Originally Posted by gnasher729

There are two ways to fix this: One is by not having excessive penalties or having no penalties at all - in this case it is clear that Apple had not intended to infringe anyone's copyright but was tricked into doing so. Penalties should only be applied to the scammers who submitted someone else's work. The other is for Apple (or anyone in a similar position) to make sure that they know who they are dealing with, so if anything goes wrong they have someone to take to court as well.

I actually thought that this was the whole point of the iPhone developer program - that if your app is malicious, Apple can use the card you paid the developer fee with to identify you.

I'm not sure why they're not handing over the addresses of the developers and asking the rights holders to sort it out with them (or maybe they did and the Chinese court just didn't accept that).

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by Saladinos

I actually thought that this was the whole point of the iPhone developer program - that if your app is malicious, Apple can use the card you paid the developer fee with to identify you.

I'm not sure why they're not handing over the addresses of the developers and asking the rights holders to sort it out with them (or maybe they did and the Chinese court just didn't accept that).

It's quite common that a person who was wronged, or someone who is owed money, finds several people or companies that could be liable, and then has a choice to sue any or all of them. Check the wikipedia article on "joint and several liability" for some rather horrible ways this can turn out in the USA.

[JHankwitz]

What books? What's the title?

[chirpie]

Originally Posted by AppleMacFinder

In a country where I live, for $1 you could buy a 1 litre bottle of beer.
For $100, you could buy 100 bottles, or 5 boxes of beer.
I cannot imagine that someone would follow your advice.

Pfft. To get a good beer here, I need at least 2 bucks for a small bottle to get something good like a Little Sumpin' Sumpin' ale, or $2.50 a small bottle for something killer like a Tank 7.

Having said that, how much piracy is enough? Where do we draw the line and why? Half of the copies in circulation? Ninety percent? Or how about what the set price is supposed to be? Are you going to set the bar of who's poor enough to get it for free and who's rich enough?

Of course not. It's silly. We didn't create the product therefore we do not choose what is done with it. Any semantics dancing one does beyond that makes me roll my eyes as incredulously as I can muster. :-)

[Lil Chillbil]

Its official china owns us