Bookshelf Apps

Sharing SongBook on multiple iPhones/iPods

February 16th, 2009 0

I’ve just come across an interesting blog post that leads me to believe that you can purchase one copy of SongBook and install it on multiple devices. This is useful if you have more than one iPhone in your house, especially if one user is only an occasional user of your audio equipment.

The trick is that iPhone Apps use the same DRM as protected iTunes music. You can authorise up to 5 computers to play music purchased with your account, and it seems that Apps are the same.

The simplest way to do this is to share one iTunes account between both users.

What you need to do is to go to the Store menu in iTunes and select “Authorize account…”. Enter the account information that you used when purchasing SongBook.

Now you can either go to the iTunes Store and purchase SongBook again, or copy over the application data file from the computer you used to purchase SongBook. The store will recognise that you have already paid for SongBook and will not charge you again.

Remember that you can only authorise up to 5 computers, and you need to give out your account information, so this is not a useful mechanism for piracy, you need to know and trust the other user. Where this works really well is where you want to share SongBook with your wife or other members of your household.

So is this legal? It appears so according to the Apple service agreement.

http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/service.html

Section 9(b) of the agreement contains “Usage Rules” for content purchased from the iTunes Store, and its relevant provisions are as follows:

…
(iii) You shall be authorized to use the Products on five Apple-authorized devices at any time, except in the case of Movie Rentals, as described below.

(iv) You shall be able to store Products from up to five different Accounts on certain devices, such as an iPod or iPhone, and Apple TV at a time;
…

Apple allows developers to add their own licensing terms in addition to this, for SongBook I have not added any additional licensing restrictions, so it appears that legally you have the right to do this.

I haven’t tried this myself, so if someone does have success with it please post a comment here to let us all know that it works.

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