

Apple bans an iPhone e-reader because it provides access to the Kama Sutra - technologizer
http://technologizer.com/2009/05/21/the-iphone-app-censorship-madness-continues/

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paulgb
Stories like this make me wonder what a younger Steve Jobs would think of
today's Apple.

The company's 1984 ad now seems a bit ironic.

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lukifer
What's the line from Dark Knight? Every hero either dies young, or lives long
enough to become the villain. The older I get, the more I see that pattern
replicated.

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chaosmachine
I guess that makes Bill Gates the exception to the rule.

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swolchok
How? He was certainly decried as a villain by many.

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DTrejo
All the people who benefit from his philanthropy?

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nazgulnarsil
charity to third world countries doesn't decrease net suffering. when you save
a starving man and he has 5 children, all of whom lead miserable lives are you
ahead or behind?

charity is about signaling your fitness to others. (like everything else)

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megaduck
Gosh, I hope that you're trolling. Otherwise, that's a very lonely and unhappy
way to view the world. It's also an incredible misinterpretation of modern
philanthropy.

Charitable organizations like the Gates foundation aren't interested in quick
"band-aid" fixes, for exactly the problem you raised. They're interested in
long-term sustainable programs that don't just help today, but also improve
life for future generations.

A good example is malaria eradication. The Gates foundation has targeted
malaria for complete destruction on a global scale. This means assisting
current victims, yes. However, if they meet their goal even partially, the
lives of future generations will be improved. Permanently.

A good anecdote about Bill Gates is when Douglas Adams went to solicit funds
for a Mountain Gorilla conservation program. Gates asked how much it would
cost. Adams started giving him estimates for the first year, and then Gates
cut him off. He said, "No. How much to solve the Mountain Gorilla problem.
Forever."

That's the current attitude. If it doesn't work past the current generation,
it's probably not worth doing. We've acknowledged that, and have moved on.

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DocSavage
That's a great anecdote. I did a Google search to get more info on that
meeting but couldn't find anything. How did you come by it?

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tlrobinson
Next: Apple removes MobileSafari from iPhone because they discovered users
could visit pornographic websites.

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chrisbolt
You can disable Safari with iPhone's restrictions. Apparently the new 3.0
firmware will allow apps to be rated Explicit and restricted like music. Once
the new firmware is released, these stories will probably go away (or be
replaced with stories about apps being unfairly marked as explicit).

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cstejerean
Why would people complain about apps being marked explicit "unfairly"? Unless
one is trying to sell apps specifically to children I doubt that a tag of
explicit will do much to hurt sales. I'd imagine it might even help, the same
way some people assume a rated R movie is by definition more interesting than
a PG-13.

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rufo
The developer's blog article is worth a read:
<http://www.blog.montgomerie.net/whither-eucalyptus>

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anigbrowl
Since the rejection is based on the results of a search, it looks like a
deliberate attempt to torpedo the review process - maybe on the basis that
they don't want users going to content that isn't monetizable?

Perhaps a good response would be to put apple on the spot by 'complaining'
that Safari (or some other iPhone app) gives access to salacious parts of the
Bible or some other cultural shibboleth. With cases like these, Apple is
setting themselves up for a class action suit or FTC review. Given that people
pay for the development tools, these kind of rejections seem like a deliberate
restraint of trade.

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frossie
_Since the rejection is based on the results of a search, it looks like a
deliberate attempt to torpedo the review process - maybe on the basis that
they don't want users going to content that isn't monetizable?_

Doubt it - I have a reader on my iPhone (Stanza) that can download free eBooks
just like this application.

The best word to describe Apple's approval process is Kafkaesque. It's not
their rules that are the problem; it is the total internal inconsistency.

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anigbrowl
True enough. I've given up trying to figure them out, and instead am thanking
myself for not getting caught up in gold rush fever. I'm too thin-skinned to
deal with this sort of thing.

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veritgo
This will probably be a good thing for the app in the long run.

\- Eventually it will get into the app store

\- All the publicity, fovorable reviews, and outrage over it will probably
spur quite a few purchases / downloads. Maybe enough to make a top 10 list.

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ciupicri
What about the other companies which don't have so much publicity?

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chops
These stories make me ever more excited for the Pre. Palm's always been
extremely open about third party apps. It's one thing to block an app from the
"Official store." It's another thing altogether to prevent third party apps
from being installed from everywhere except the official store. I suspect if
users could install their own apps manually, all this hubbub would go away.

Of course, I couldn't possibly see Apple allowing this, for fear of someone
else creating their own App Store app and developer submission network,
without Apple's complete lack of written guidelines, and apparently
inconsistent application of whatever it's own internal guidelines are.

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madair
I suggest a new meme: Showing banned content on iPhones and blogging photos of
the iPhone showing it loud and clear. Or something like that. I mean, come on,
is that what they are afraid of?!??

Note the difference between Apple and Craigslist. Craigslist goes out on a
limb based on their strongly stated belief structure; Apple actively fights
those very same principles, preferring that nothing muck with the pristine
image.

I think you know which CEO I want in a foxhole with me. Hell, I think Craig
should run for public office.

Back to the problem at hand, it seems everyone and their brother wants to
print cash through some new walled garden, and the apologists will trot out
the familiar stinky logic, things like, "well they've got a lot of buyers
don't they, how could THAT be wrong?!?"

But the computer industry grew with tinkering, hell it grew with HACKING, and
even that old devil of a heel, Microsoft, had a big part in the growth of open
hardware systems. Don't bother to trot out the exceptions, there will always
be exceptions, but big picture is the PC exists and is the mad playground
today that it was the instant IBM flew with MS-DOS way back when.

Sure the iPhone is a great design, sure the Mac has their beautiful
craftmanship. But they are as closed systems as Apple can conceivably get away
with, and the fan boys and girls who are also hackers are letting us all down
by trying to drown out the calls for more openness. Let's call a spade a
spade: the hardware engineering is cool, but the wall-in garden attitude sucks
like hell and is harmful to hackers, to consumer, to freedom-lovers of all
stripes.

You can't argue with profits...unless you think that there are things more
important than money.

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swilliams
My suspicion is that Apple outsources the content review process (if not the
whole thing). Thus you get completely asinine and inconsistent rejections like
this and others.

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rudyfink
Well, on one level, I'm kind of amused by the reviewers attention to detail...
On another level, this thing reads like a comedy piece someone would make up
about the dangers of censorship.

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vlad
At BarCamp, a speaker complained that Apple rejected his quick-links app
because the reviewer queried wikipedia for an offensive word, and then
followed links in the resulting page onto more offensive topics.

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tophat02
As terrible as the App Store situation is today, it will get better starting
in June/July. I have a hunch that Apple is going to solve this problem with
parental controls.

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KC8ZKF
I don't think that will solve the problem. Why should a book reader with
access to Project Gutenberg carry the burden of an adults-only application?
And doesn't that kind of prudery render the explicit tag meaningless to
parents? The only thing it does is covers Apple's ass^Wbackside.

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Dauntless
I guess any photo viewer or something users can add content to should be
banned also... ridiculous stuff.

