iPhone IDK ideas

While I don't usually speak up for others, I recently got a newsletter email from ReadScriptures.com that said that they are expecting to release a scripture reader for the iPhone/iTouch this June when the SDK is finally released.

They also mention this announcement on their website. ReadScriptures.com currently offers an online version of the scriptures for iPhone/iTouch.

Thanks for the info. I'm excited to see what people come up with!

Thanks for mentioning ReadScriptures.com, Josiah. Yes, we are developing the Scriptures for the iPhone and iPod Touch. You can sign up to be notified when it is released (in June when Apple releases the iPhone App store) by going here:

Downloadable Scriptures for iPhone and iPod Touch

We have lots of great features and a well designed interface that will make reading the scriptures enjoyable on the iPhone and iPod Touch. We will have lots of LDS content available like other scripture readers on other platforms. Please email any suggestions to [url=mailto:mdjensen@gmail.com]mdjensen@gmail.com[/url].

Thanks!

I plan on working on some sort of iPhone application for new FamilySearch, allowing searching and browsing, possibly editing.

I need to finish FSKit first.

Logan

I've also seen other media players using the Opera browser. Has anyone used NFS in Opera? One or more made by Archos does, and they make one with a 7" screen which is not one you can put in your pocket but is more web-friendly.

I'm in the process of porting Handy Scriptures to run on the iPhone. I'm also considering other LDS-themed applications as time allows.

Wow. Having an application that displayed hymns in the iPhone would be handy. Think pocket hymnal size. Think being able to switch from the English hymnal to Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, etc.

This would probably start out as nothing more than a special PDF document that would be viewable in the iPhone. But it would be a nice feature to have.

Then they could add the Primary Songbook.

jbh001 wrote:Wow. Having an application that displayed hymns in the iPhone would be handy. Think pocket hymnal size. Think being able to switch from the English hymnal to Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, etc.

This would probably start out as nothing more than a special PDF document that would be viewable in the iPhone. But it would be a nice feature to have.

Then they could add the Primary Songbook.

You can now download the sheet music for the entire hymn book and the Children's Songbook in zipped PDF files. The downloads are available for English, Spanish, Portuguese and French.

http://www.lds.org/cm/display/0,17631,7572-1,00.html

danpass wrote:You can now download the sheet music for the entire hymn book and the Children's Songbook in zipped PDF files. The downloads are available for English, Spanish, Portuguese and French.

http://www.lds.org/cm/display/0,17631,7572-1,00.html

Thanks for the link. I'm amazed the Church has published these works in PDF, as there are over a dozen works in the Hymn Book alone that are not allowed to be reproduced except with written permission by the copyright holder (which in these cases is NOT the LDS church.) I always thought a digital reproduction was as much of a violation of a copyright as a printed copy, but obviously the Church has somehow resolved this issue.

I believe you will find that the few hymns and songs for which the Church does not own the copyright are not included online.

lajackson wrote:I believe you will find that the few hymns and songs for which the Church does not own the copyright are not included online.

Interesting. I would have guessed off the top of my head that the above statement would be correct, but it's not. All the hymns are included in the PDF sheet music file. One example is #86, "How Great Thou Art", which includes the text at the bottom of the page in the PDF file exactly as it is in the printed hymn book:

Making copies without written permission of the copyright owner is prohibited.

And yet "How Great Thou Art" is not included in the collection of MP3s downloadable from that same page. Also, in another place in the Music section of lds.org, "How Great Thou Art" is not included in the alphabetical list at http://www.lds.org/cm/catalogsearchalph ... -1,00.html, saying "How Great Thou Art - #86 - This selection could not be included on this site because of copyright restrictions."
So it seems hard to believe that it is appropriate for it (and other similar restricted hymns) to be included in the Sheet Music PDF file. My guess is someone made a mistake, and it really shouldn't have been included, but I'm no expert on copyright law.

I'm not an expert on copyright issues either. Before my last post, I did a quick keyword search through the PDFs and found 13 works in the Hymn Book with copyright issues (including #86) and 10 in the Children's Songbook. I can only hope hope it was something that got resolved by the Church and not published in error.

Alan_Brown wrote:So it seems hard to believe that it is appropriate for it (and other similar restricted hymns) to be included in the Sheet Music PDF file. My guess is someone made a mistake, and it really shouldn't have been included, but I'm no expert on copyright law.

Well, do they pay for each hymnal the church pints? If not, then I wonder what the difference between the PDF file and printing as many Hymnals as you want would be?

It's possible it's already covered somehow.

Note that performing the song (MP3) is different then publishing the sheet music.

RussellHltn wrote:Note that performing the song (MP3) is different then publishing the sheet music.

That is a key difference, although I do not know copyright law. Perhaps the Church did obtain permission.

I believe the Church does pay royalty fees for each hymnbook published for some hymns. Many years ago, my father printed 1,000 copies of a program for a Church activity, then realized that one of the hymns had a copyright notice. He called the copyright holder, who told him to print as many as he wanted, then send a check for 4 cents each and everything would be fine.

He mailed a $40 check and didn't worry any further about it. The Church copyright office told him he had done exactly the correct thing.

The Church has a large legal department attached to correlation which carefully reviews and clears all content before it is published.

Tom

As a follow-up to this thread, I have published an app for the iPhone called [url=itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lds-hymns/id332640791?mt=8]LDS Hymns[/url] (App Store link) that allows you to use the music published by the Church. I removed the copyrighted hymns. If someone knows more about copyright than I do, please let me know if I can include the copyrighted music (it's available on the Church website...) or if it's legal to charge for this application (right now it is free, but I'm not going to be able to keep this up since it costs me $99/yr just to have this free application in the App Store and we don't have much money. Other scripture apps out there charge for their stuff that has the same IRI copyright as the hymns I've included. I'm afraid I don't understand how that works).

I've also just released a Spanish version called [url=itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/himnos-sud/id339675825?mt=8]Himnos SUD[/url] (App Store link).

Ricky wrote:As a follow-up to this thread, I have published an app for the iPhone called [url=itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lds-hymns/id332640791?mt=8]LDS Hymns[/url] (App Store link) that allows you to use the music published by the Church. I removed the copyrighted hymns. If someone knows more about copyright than I do, please let me know if I can include the copyrighted music (it's available on the Church website...) or if it's legal to charge for this application (right now it is free, but I'm not going to be able to keep this up since it costs me $99/yr just to have this free application in the App Store and we don't have much money. Other scripture apps out there charge for their stuff that has the same IRI copyright as the hymns I've included. I'm afraid I don't understand how that works).

I've also just released a Spanish version called [url=itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/himnos-sud/id339675825?mt=8]Himnos SUD[/url] (App Store link).

I think your desire to stay within copyright is much appreciated. In truth, there are legal issues with almost all of the scripture apps out there. I'm sure it is quite a challenge for the Church to keep a hold on their copyrights and intellectual property, but also not discourage innovation by the volunteer community at the same time.

Ricky wrote:As a follow-up to this thread, I have published an app for the iPhone called [url=itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lds-hymns/id332640791?mt=8]LDS Hymns[/url] (App Store link) that allows you to use the music published by the Church. I removed the copyrighted hymns. If someone knows more about copyright than I do, please let me know if I can include the copyrighted music (it's available on the Church website...) or if it's legal to charge for this application (right now it is free, but I'm not going to be able to keep this up since it costs me $99/yr just to have this free application in the App Store and we don't have much money. Other scripture apps out there charge for their stuff that has the same IRI copyright as the hymns I've included. I'm afraid I don't understand how that works).

I've also just released a Spanish version called [url=itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/himnos-sud/id339675825?mt=8]Himnos SUD[/url] (App Store link).

Hi Ricky. I ended up at this page following the bit trail from your hymns app project page, which i found while searching to see what is available in hymn apps for mobiles. I'm working on making a similar app for Maemo5, and was delighted to find the hymns all available in PDF via lds.org. It wasn't easy to find starting from http://www.lds.org/

My fallback plan (dating all the way back to when I was contemplating a hymn app for the PalmOS in 2000) was to use midi files and a simple midi converter to display the musical notation, along with optional pitch pipe/accompaniment. Well, obviously that never happened, but I do want a hymn app on my N900 and PDFs are a much easier way to get there.

Regarding the usage policy, here's the message linked at the bottom of the page that delivers that content:

Rights and Usage Information Materials with copyright not held by Intellectual Reserve, Inc., or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are so labeled and the use of such must be handled through respective owners.
Use of all materials published herein, including, visuals, text, icons, display, database, general information, etc., is subject to the following conditions:

1. Materials may not be used for commercial purposes, however, materials may be reproduced by media personnel for use in traditional public news forums.
2. Materials may be reproduced for incidental, noncommercial church or home purposes with the exception of Web site use.
3. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the copyright owner reserves sole discretion and right to deny, revoke, or limit use, including reproduction.

My understanding from that is that

1. whatever the church did to allow them to publish PDFs of all the hymns does not apply beyond lds.org, so you're probably correct in stripping the external copyright content from the app.
2. you can't charge for the app because that would not constitute noncommercial use and/or publication

Providing a way for content users to make voluntary donations, and limiting the amount of donations accepted in a year to the cost of maintaining the app in the app store would probably be acceptable use.

Again, this is all IMO.

I presume you have split the PDF into individual pages and trimmed them to better display. I'd be interested in saving some repetition of work by using the processed PDFs for the free Maemo5 app if you would be willing to share those.