Just hours after Apple’s education announcements on 19 January 2012, the Internet began to vibrate with discussion, much of it dismayed, about some of the terms in the end-user license agreement (EULA) that accompanies Apple’s iBooks Author application. Take Control Books editor-in-chief Tonya Engst was empaneled with other concerned netizens by Chuck Joiner at MacJury to deliberate about how the EULA, even more than the iBooks format itself, might affect the publishing community.

We haven’t been following the Golan case before the U.S. Supreme Court, but Techdirt explains how the Court has ruled that the United States can retroactively take works out of the public domain and put them back under copyright. The government’s claim is that this is necessary for a trade agreement to make other countries respect our copyright, but the end result is that it could (and likely will) be used to shrink the public domain. We’re all in favor of copyright giving incentives to creators, but we can’t see how putting the works of dead people back under copyright will result in any new work.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s restriction on electronic devices — even those that don’t have internal radios or are in Airplane Mode — during takeoff (including sitting on the runway for hours) and landing has always seemed unnecessarily cautious, and Nick Bilton of the New York Times has explored that in the past. But his latest blog post makes the restriction seem even more ridiculous, since the FAA is now allowing American Airlines pilots to use iPads in the cockpit at all times. The only defense given is that it might be different if everyone was using a device during takeoff or landing, but that seems eminently testable. Wouldn’t it be refreshing if flying could become more convenient for a change?

The venerable interface designer Bruce Tognazzini devotes his latest “Ask Tog” column to the question of whether it’s better to browse or search lists in iOS, such as in the Contacts app. It’s a fascinating read, not so much for his proposed redesign, but for the background of why aspects of iOS can be so frustrating for some people.

With MacNotables host Chuck Joiner keeping the conversation moving, Adam presented to both the Bay Area Macintosh Users Group and the Hershey Apple Core via Skype, talking about the loss of Steve Jobs, what Adobe’s discontinuation of Flash for mobile devices means, where Mac users should look for databases other than FileMaker, why aspects of Lion may be troubling for long-time Mac users, and more.

iTunes Match features in this podcast, along with the Kindle Fire, how Android-using smartphone manufacturers think about updates, and more about the problems with COPPA-driven age requirements on common Web sites.

In this academic paper from the Boston University School of Law, the authors show that patent trolls have cost defendants — mostly large technology companies who invest heavily in R&D — $500 billion from 1990 through 2010, and over the last 4 years, the cost has averaged $80 billion per year. Moreover, very little of this money ever makes it to the actual inventors, meaning that the money lost by defendants doesn’t incentivize other inventors. In short, software patents (for most of this behavior surrounds them) are simply a drag on innovation and real progress.