MediaTech Law

By MIRSKY & COMPANY, PLLC

HTML5 Unintended Consequence? Getting Around Apple In-App Sales Restrictions.

Posted October 10, 2011 by Andrew Mirsky 0

One unintended consequence of the accelerating popularity of HTML5 for mobile app development is an ability to skate past Apple’s App Store restrictions on in-app sales.  So I put this question to Piotr Steininger of Tapangi Consulting:

There’s talk out there about being able to use HTML5 to get around Apple’s App Store ban on charging for in-app purchases.  In other words (I think), somehow HTML5 allows content producers to get around this problem by making apps (and other things) downloadable directly through web browsers.  So … how is it that HTML5 allows getting around this issue?

Some background: Apple announced a policy change earlier this year, specifically in Section 11.14 of its App Store guidelines,

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Software License vs. Sale: Copyright’s “First Sale”

Posted September 29, 2010 by Andrew Mirsky 0

An interesting case comes out of the West earlier this month under Copyright law’s “first sale” doctrine, involving computer software under a license agreement.

Copyright’s “first sale” doctrine

The “first sale” doctrine involves this concept: If you buy a copyrighted work (say, a painting, or a book, or – as in this case – software – you have an unqualified right to transfer your copy of that work to anybody as you please.  That doesn’t mean you can make additional copies and sell those too, but generally it does mean that you are free to resell something that you purchase.  (As will be discussed below, the operative term is “purchased”.)

The doctrine was first recognized by the Supreme Court in a 1908 case, and later codified by Congress into the Copyright Act in the 1976 amendments to the Act.

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Apple App Store Rejects Content – There’s More!

Posted May 7, 2010 by Andrew Mirsky 0

I recently wrote about the dust-up following the awarding of a Pulitzer for political commentary to online cartoonist Mark Fiore, when it was revealed that Apple had rejected Fiore’s proposed iPhone App several months before Fiore’s Pulitzer fame.  As had been widely reported, Apple subsequently invited Fiore to re-apply, which Fiore promptly did and now, evidently, Fiore’s cartoon app is available for download through the store.

Commentary on the episode leaned heavily to the view of “what gall!” of Apple to presume rights to regulate content.  So, for example, Rob Pegoraro wrote in the Washington Post last week:

If this conduct seems arbitrary, that’s because Apple gives itself that liberty.  The Cupertino, Calif., company’s iPhone developer agreement, as published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says Apple can reject an application “at any time” if it thinks rejection would be “prudent or necessary.”

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Apple’s Apps and the Pulitzer Cartoonist: Right to Ban Content?

Posted April 21, 2010 by Andrew Mirsky 0

Trumpets Ryan Chittum in the Columbia Journalism Review, “Yes, this is that serious. [The news media] needs to wrest back control of its speech from Apple Inc.  It’s easy to do it now while the press has leverage over Apple.  If the iPad becomes a significant driver of media revenue, and Apple decides to crack down, it will be too late (yes, the iPad has a Web browser, but the monetary leverage it could gain with apps is what’s concerning).”

Here’s an interesting dilemma for a potentially dominant technology or communications platform: Early Twentieth Century Supreme Court cases found a “public” (and therefore “government” and therefore subject to regulation) role of company towns and their attempts to enforce “private” laws through company-supported police powers.

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E-Books and the Cost of Publishing – What Value? Why the Big Price?

Posted March 18, 2010 by Andrew Mirsky 0

NPR’s Lynn Neary reported last week on the value of e-books (“No Ink, No Paper: What’s The Value Of An E-Book?”), illuminating the nuance about pricing of electronic books. Because books – electronic or otherwise – are still almost entirely issued by old-line publishing houses under the same decades-old operational model, a publisher’s cost of operations still has to be recouped. And for publishers, the sole source of that recoupment remains the consumer purchaser of a book, regardless of the medium of a book’s distribution or purchase or presentation. From this perspective, a more alarming (from the publishing industry’s perspective) competitive threat on the market today is the low-cost pricing of hardcover books (including current bestsellers) at places like Target, Costco and Walmart.

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