Apple's draconian developer docs revealed

In the 1999 movie Fight Club, Brad Pitt famously tells a huddle of pugilistic aspirants: "The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club."

Apple's iPhone Developer Program License Agreement phrases that sentiment differently, but its directive to iPhone developers is essentially the same:

You may not issue any press releases or make any other public statements regarding this Agreement, its terms and conditions, or the relationship of the parties without Apple's express prior written approval, which may be withheld at Apple's discretion.

This nugget was finally uncovered by the digital-freedom crusaders at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), who obtained a copy (PDF) of the Agreement by invoking the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) after the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration signed on as an iPhone developer.

What's in the Agreement that Apple doesn't want you to know? The EFF's report has a few suggestions, including the fact that Apple can reject an app for any reason, even if it meets all the Agreement's requirements.

There's also the stipulation that prohibits any kind of reverse engineering of the SDK or iPhone OS, including what the EFF claims are "the kinds of reverse engineering for interoperability that courts have recognized as a fair use under copyright law."

Then there's the edict that a dev cannot "disable, hack, or otherwise interfere with" not just the iPhone OS and SDK, but also "any services or other Apple software or technology" - which precludes, as the EFF points out, efforts to enable Apple devices to interoperate with open source software.

But wait. There's more. In the Agreement's "Limitation of Liability" section, Apple states that it can never be held liable for damages - other than those involving personal injury - that "exceed the amount of fifty dollars." In other words, if the App Store police decide to axe your app for any reason, all damages resulting from your loss of development, marketing, and other expenses can't amount to more than what the EFF calls "the cost of a nice dinner for one in Cupertino."

It's no news that the iPhone, the iPod touch, and the forthcoming iPad are closed systems. Reading the Agreement, however, reveals just how closed those systems are, and just how committed how Apple is to reversing decades of developers' abilities to publish and market apps as they see fit - not to mention the user's right to load whatever software they want onto devices they have purchased.

And even this unprecedented degree of control isn't enough for Apple. As we reported a year ago, Apple has told the US Copyright Office that jailbreaking an iPhone should be illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). According to Apple, the EFF's petition that jailbreaking should be exempt from the DMCA is "an attack on Apple's particular business choices with respect to the design of the iPhone mobile computing platform and the strategy for delivering applications software for the iPhone through the iPhone App Store."

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