http://tidbits.com/ Amidst all the hoopla about new hardware, Apple last week also revved iBooks, the company’s flagship ebook-reading iOS app, to version 3.0 and updated iBooks Author, the company’s proprietary ebook-creation Mac program, to version 2.0. Michael Cohen tips you off to what’s new in iBooks and then details the improvements in iBooks Author. en-us Copyright 2012 TidBITS Publishing Inc. Mon, 26 Nov 2012 00:00:00 EST Mon, 26 Nov 2012 00:00:00 EST editors@tidbits.com (TidBITS Editors) editors@tidbits.com (TidBITS Editors) http://tidbits.com/images/tb_logo_152x55.png http://tidbits.com/ 55 152 TidBITS badge http://db.tidbits.com/article/13352?rss#comments_16601 Mon, 26 Nov 2012 21:29:36 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13352#comments_16601
The copyright "nag" is reasonable, even in the case of Project Gutenberg, which does maintain a compilation copyright in the book; see the license agreement that accompanies each Project Gutenberg text for details.

Nor do I see any problem with the nag; it's easy to remove after you paste the copied text, and it does remind less sophisticated readers, such as student writers, that just because a text CAN be copied, doesn't mean that it is not legally protected. (I know whereof I speak, having worked with student writers for many years and having seen them confuse the ability to copy with the right to do so.)

And, yes, the amount you can copy is limited; I found it amounts to about 200 words, which, to me, seems a reasonable amount of text for quotations used in "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching […], scholarship, or research" as specified in the 17 U.S.C. § 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 (the "Fair Use" section).

Of course, for a non copy-protected EPUB, like those from Project Gutenberg, it is very simple to extract ALL the text from it. But that's a whole other matter.

For casual use, student use, and scholarly use, the limits that Apple has imposed don't seem overly restrictive.]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13352?rss#comments_16596 Mon, 26 Nov 2012 15:13:13 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13352#comments_16596 My excitement was dampened somewhat when I learned by experiment that you are limited in how much text actually makes it to the other zoo, email, etc. You'll see [...] where your selection has been truncated. I got only 13 lines from Jack London's "Call of the Wild."
Even with this public domain book gotten from Project Gutenberg, I got the "may be subject to copyright" nag.
Better that it was but not as good as it should be. Apple is very timid.]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13352?rss#comments_16375 Mon, 29 Oct 2012 21:15:06 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13352#comments_16375 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13352?rss#comments_16374 Mon, 29 Oct 2012 21:12:38 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13352#comments_16374 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13352?rss#comments_16373 Mon, 29 Oct 2012 21:10:15 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13352#comments_16373 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13352?rss#comments_16310 Thu, 25 Oct 2012 18:44:09 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13352#comments_16310
As for 'fortune cookie format', it's a hell of a lot faster and more comfortable to read that, than it is to listen to text-to-speech which can be the only alternative (by about a factor of ten).]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13352?rss#comments_16303 Thu, 25 Oct 2012 11:38:51 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13352#comments_16303 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13352?rss#comments_16302 Thu, 25 Oct 2012 11:37:45 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13352#comments_16302
That said, publishers are free to make large-print ebooks just as they can make large-print paper books. Nothing in iBooks Author nor in the EPUB standard prohibits that.]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13352?rss#comments_16301 Thu, 25 Oct 2012 11:32:55 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13352#comments_16301 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13352?rss#comments_16300 Thu, 25 Oct 2012 06:37:26 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13352#comments_16300 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13352?rss#comments_16298 Wed, 24 Oct 2012 21:44:55 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13352#comments_16298
I have nothing but unkind thoughts for people who put page layout ahead of full readability. Zoom, which forces the sea-sickness of side scrolling for every line, is not a tolerable option. There are plenty of us in the middle of the continuum between 'easily corrected vision' and 'blind'. Accommodations for the blind are nearly useless for the middle. All we usually need is *big* fonts (an inch high is not absurdly large, though I'm luckily not yet to that point.)

Apple clearly doesn't understand this. I've lost track of the number of times that I've pulled out a magnifying glass to read things on an iphone--faster and less nauseating than zoom.]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13352?rss#comments_16296 Wed, 24 Oct 2012 20:45:49 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13352#comments_16296