iPhone Web Claims Draw Governmental Rebuke in UK

Wills writes "Apple has been running an iPhone ad saying 'all parts of the internet are on the iPhone', but it had to be withdrawn after Britain's Advertising Standards Authority ruled that it gave 'a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone' because the iPhone cannot access Flash or Java – features that are essential to some websites. This raises an interesting issue of where do you draw the line between essential and non-essential features of websites. What should the web look like? Should government authorities be the ones making that decision?"

Comments

Confusion

[Anonymous Coward]

The ad repeatedly says you can get the whole 'internet', not just the web.

Apple, I want gopher dammit!

Re:Confusion

[EvilNTUser]

You're modded funny, but this IS another valid reason it's false advertising. If they want to decide what runs on the phone, they really can't claim it supports the whole internet. You can't have it both ways.

That comment about whether the government should really decide is very trollish. Supply and demand have in fact decided that many sites require flash*. The government is only enforcing truth in advertising. Not everything they do is automatically wrong, ok?

*no matter how much it may annoy us.

Re:Confusion

[Candid88]

"That comment about whether the government should really decide is very trollish."

Not only that, but it's also completely irrelevant to the story. The Advertising Standards Authority (who deemed the advert misleading) was setup by the advertising industry's trade body and has absolutely nothing to do with the British government.

The ASA ruling is non-legally binding although all major broadcasters and publishers generally adhere to it. The appropriate governmental agencies are Ofcom (office of communication) and OFT (office of fair trading) which have the relevant legal powers. Neither of which were involved here.

Re:Confusion

[Crispy Critters]

"The ad repeatedly says you can get the whole 'internet', not just the web."

This is certainly OT, but it annoys me to no end when hotels do the same thing. "Wireless High Speed Internet!" -- when all they allow is web access. Believe it or not, some people care more about port 22 than about port 80. I guess if I were in the UK, I could sue.

The Apple case has some ambiguity. What is "access"? What constitutes "the internet"? Is it still the internet without Java? Maybe. Is it still the internet if it is restricted to the web? NO.

Re:Confusion

[bigstrat2003]

No, the advertisement authority did the right thing here. "The entire internet" is a lofty claim, and Apple isn't living up to it. I don't give a damn if 99% of the population doesn't care about the entire internet, Apple is still responsible for being factual in their claims.

Re:Confusion

[TheRaven64]

99.9% of the population don't know what Gopher is, let alone expect it to be on the iPhone

Gopher is a contrived example, but what about other protocols? The average user might not use NNTP, but they probably do use some kind of IM protocol, whether it's something proprietary like MSNM or AIM, or something open like XMPP (e.g. GTalk). They might use VoIP, again with either a proprietary protocol like Skype or a open one like SIP. They may not understand the protocols, but they know that they use these things over 'The Internet' and if something advertises the whole Internet then it should allow them. As it is, it doesn't even support the whole web.

Re:Confusion

[cos(0)]

It will do what most people want it to do.

Yes, but this doesn't make the advertisement true or acceptable. The same argument can be made for ISPs' advertisements of "unlimited Internet" (unless you consume too much) or "6 Mbps download" (for the first 3 seconds) -- these are both misleading even though most people will not suffer from these statements.

Re:Confusion

[bigstrat2003]

No one lives up to that claim... but then again, they aren't making it. Apple is the one stupid enough to have made the claim, so it only matters if they live up to it.

Re:Confusion

[nine-times]

You're modded funny, but this IS another valid reason it's false advertising.

Well whether or not it's false, I think the key issue is whether a reasonable person would find it misleading. What I mean is, even if you give Apple the benefit of the doubt and say it's not intentionally deceptive, and even if you think Apple is trying to say something that's true, I can still see how it would lead someone to assume things that are false.

And therefore it seems fair to me that it would be labeled "misleading". Apple should rework the ad to make it more clear.

Re:Confusion

[Verdatum]

aw come on, the iPhone can ACCESS "the entire Internet". They've got an IP stack, all is happy. There's no promise that the iPhone will know what to do with the bits once they actually ARRIVE! I'm no iphone guy but if they just include a decent copy of telnet, so long as you can read ascii encoded hex and type REALLY fast integrating knowledge of whatever protocol is involved, then you technically have the WHOLE Internet!

Re:Confusion

[bigstrat2003]

It could be argued, by this logic, that no device can access 'the entire internet' with the possible exception of Windows based PC's because only a Windows PC will run ActiveX controls (wine hackage not withstanding).

Indeed. Which is why companies shouldn't make stupid, pie-in-the-sky claims like Apple did. That easy.

Re:Confusion

[Random BedHead Ed]

Supply and demand have in fact decided that many sites require flash

I see your point about supply and demand. Nevertheless I don't see how the accessibility of Flash-heavy sites (even though there are a lot of them out there) should be taken as contradicting the phrase "all parts of the Internet." If we approach it that way, any 64-bit Linux distro wouldn't be able to access "all parts of the Internet" because they don't have a compatible Flash plugin either. Heck, the Olympics site is a very prominant site and so is the Democratic Convention site, and both of them (and a smattering of others) require Silverlight, which doesn't have a full implementation on even 32-bit Linux, but I'd hardly call my Ubuntu laptop an Internet loser. And the Wii uses Opera on Linux, which probably gets the shaft from a lot of crappy banking sites that boot non-Windows UserAgents. Should Nintendo be barred from claims of access to the whole Internet?

Again, I acknowledge your point about Flash's unfortunate popularity, and I'd add to it that Apple's use of the broad term "Internet" as a substitute for the more specific "Web" is silly (on that note, I love people's comments on the fact that the claim is technically inaccurate if the iPhone excludes the gopher protocol). But there are a lot of devices and OSes out there that can't access every single bit of content on the Web. I don't see how this sort of exclusion helps informed consumers.

Re:Confusion

[Ilgaz]

Also we Symbian/Opera and J2ME/Opera Mini users have been experiencing the "real internet" for ages. We didn't even get boost from "Opera version" of sites, it is just some clever ones sent the mobile optimised version.

An Opera on a high end Symbian handset like Nokia N95 or E90 won't be different from the desktop version in any manner. I can't think of any sites which will degrade in functionality. Java is a different thing, the desktop java is still to heavy for mobile devices so they run J2ME but especially for 2 years, J2ME users constantly get amazed at what that thing can do. I got amazed when Youtube released a J2ME version for example and that thing could play smooth videos.

Re:Confusion

[Richard_at_work]

If we approach it that way, any 64-bit Linux distro wouldn't be able to access "all parts of the Internet" because they don't have a compatible Flash plugin either. Heck, the Olympics site is a very prominant site and so is the Democratic Convention site, and both of them (and a smattering of others) require Silverlight, which doesn't have a full implementation on even 32-bit Linux, but I'd hardly call my Ubuntu laptop an Internet loser.

If you show that any Linux distro can be proven to have advertised in the UK, specifically in the UK, that they could access "all parts of the internet", then yes, they would be subject to the same issue as Apple here.

And the Wii uses Opera on Linux, which probably gets the shaft from a lot of crappy banking sites that boot non-Windows UserAgents. Should Nintendo be barred from claims of access to the whole Internet?

Again, do Nintendo actively claim this in any advertising?

Re:Confusion

[bigstrat2003]

And that's what they delivered.

No.

They delivered what the W3C says the Web should be coded to. They delivered email following the POP3 and IMAP standards for email.

Exactly. This is not the entire internet, nor should it be allowed to be advertised as such.

If the W3C/RFP documents that outline HTML, HTTP, HTTPS don't outline what "web and email" are, then nothing does.

Quite true. Nothing does. Like it or not, Flash and Java content is an important part of the Web, and were you to promise to deliver the whole Web (to say nothing of the internet itself, a far loftier claim!), you must deliver them. Period. If a Web site has it as content, you must be able to display it before you can say you deliver the whole Web.

I'm not saying it's unreasonable of Apple to not want to dick around with that, I'm saying they can't claim they're delivering more than they actually are.

Re:Confusion

[Sandbags]

Anything proprietary is not "The Internet" The internet is open source, defined as a small set of protocols for displaying online content. Protocols shifted over the IP network are not part of the internet. The internet is a subset of protocols, not an umbrella of all of them.

"The Internet" is accessed with a browser. "Internet Mail" is a web page that access e-mail through a browser, but is considdered diferent from e-mail, which uses IMAP, SMTP, POP, etc, and which requires other custom applications. Every e-mail server is on the net, but not all of them are on the "Internet."

Ansl, anything embeded inside of a web page is called content. Some of that content requires a 3rd party propprietary interpreter, API, or application. The Internet hands over content but displaying it or accessing it may require additional tools. These tools are not on the internet, but on your device, and hence are not part of the internet.

A file server gives me access to data files. There is no guarantee I can open the file it sends me, but I can acces sit nonetheless. HTML has built in rules for embedding 3rd party content in a site that is not capable of being displayed on the internet. If a plug-in or 3rd party external application is required, it displays such a notice. Seeing this notice (not a loading error, but an indication specifically showing the site loaded proerly, but some content will not be streamed), means the site was displayed properly, and thus, the iPhone accessed it correctly.

NO browser on the market supports Flash or JAva on its own. ALL of them require a plug in. The default configuration does NOT include flash or java for any browser. The iPhone is exactly that. It's up to the user to acquire these 3rd party plug-ins. It just happens that they are not available.

This is in complete contracts to other moble devices, which can not display the complete codeset of HTML itself, as all other browsers can, but require special "mobile" versions of websites to be created by site administrators. The ide here is that site admins need to do NOTHING extra to accomodate iPhoner users, thus we can access all of the internet the same as we do at home, provided we add support for 3rd party add-ins if site operators choose not to provide (as they used to) flash free versions of their sites (which they ALL should!!!)

Re:Confusion

[Warbothong]

The Internet is a packet-switching network. As far as I can tell the iPhone has just as much connectivity as any home computer, it's not sandboxed into some crappy WAP corner nobody cares about. In that sense the advert is true.

The complaint is actually about the Web, which is not the Internet and not what Apple were claiming to have all of. Besides, Flash and Java are not really part of the Web, they're applications which are accessed via the Internet. If the Java and Flash files can be saved to the iPhone, even if they don't run, their claim is not misleading.

This is actually a pretty scary prospect, since WebKit is one of the most standards compliant browser engines there is, and it's drawing fire for not running proprietary (at least when the iPhone was being developed) third-party applications just because those things happen to work "at home" (ie. on a desktop/laptop probably running IE).

keyword 'all'

[steveargonman]

When I hear the phrase..

'all parts of the internet are on the iPhone',

I tend to think I can access just about anything. I think expecting java or flash to work isn't asking much yet that's not available so I do think saying 'all' is a little misleading.

I think a simple re-wording would get their point across and yet not be invalid.

Re:keyword 'all'

[Buran]

Actually, it displays it properly according to the W3C standards for HTML -- Safari even passes the Acid test.

What about NNTP? P2P?

[oldspewey]

Knowing nothing about iPhone I have to ask, can it run a newsreader client? p2p client?

Re:Who misses flash?

[garcia]

Who misses flash?

Those of us that use sites that are built with it. While I don't need it for most mobile browsing, there are some sites where it is required. If the device can play YouTube flash videos, why can't it load the flash sites too?

I will be purchasing an iPhone shortly and know of its shortcomings but to blindly support their decision not to include something that is so very popular on the web is a bit ridiculous IMO.

Huh ?

[garett_spencley]

From the summary: "Apple has been running an iPhone ad saying 'all parts of the internet are on the iPhone'"

followed by: "This raises an interesting issue of where do you draw the line between essential and non-essential features of websites. What should the web look like? Should government authorities be the ones making that decision?"

What the hell does that have to do with anything ? I didn't RTFA but it sounds like the problem is that they said that ALL parts of the Internet are accessible via the iPhone ... not "all but flash and java" ... which has nothing to do with "essential vs. non-essential", what-so-ever. Sounds like a simple case of false advertising to me.

Re:Huh ?

[mr_mischief]

Flash and Java are not parts of the Internet. They are content served across it. You can download them without the applications in place to use them, even.

Re:Huh ?

[jimicus]

Arguing that you can download the flash file, you just can't do anything useful with it I would say definitely comes under the heading of following the letter rather than the spirit of the regulation.

Re:Who misses flash?

[initdeep]

that may be.

however, by stating they can access ALL of the internet, they are misleading customers.

Thus I have no problem with them being forced to pull and reword their advertisement.

it's no different than forcing companies who use speed as part of their broadband marketing to say "up to x many times faster" instead of point blank stating their maximum speed as if it were the absolute truth and everyone ALWAYS received it.

Most people won't know the difference, but if you're going to use marketing, at least use it properly.

what?

[bigmaddog]

1. Apple makes a bogus/oversimplified claim in ad.
2. Gov't says "stop bsing in your ads."
3. Poster asks "should gov't regulate look & feel of the web?"

Holy non sequitur batman!

Re:what?

[cos(0)]

Gov't says "stop bsing in your ads."

The non-sequitur is in the fact that it wasn't the government that asked Apple to stop; it was the Advertising Standards Authority. From their web site: "The Advertising Standards Authority is the independent body set up by the advertising industry to police the rules laid down in the advertising codes." There is no government involvement.

Is it the fault of Apple or Adobe?

[damn_registrars]

Considering how obnoxiously ubiquitous Flash has become on the web - and how many sites you can't view without the sexiest version of Flash - it is no surprise that people are angry that the iPhone doesn't do Flash.

But on the other hand, there are plenty of other configurations that don't do Flash, either. Really most Linux distros don't do Flash to the satisfaction of plenty of Flash-only sites. And of course Flash doesn't care about people using Lynx or anyone with impairments that makes it difficult to use a mouse.

However, as much as I'm not an Apple fan myself, I would say really the fault likely belongs more to Adobe. They have chosen to develop Flash in a way that allows third-rate web designers to use it instead of genuine code, while simultaneously giving a big middle finger to those of us who don't meet the compatibility requirements for the newest version.

Perhaps with some luck, some significant good could come from the iPhone - people will start writing more non-flash sites (or at least non-flash versions for those of us who cannot or will not use flash).

Should government authorities ...

[Trigun]

Should government authorities be the ones making that decision?"

Should Apple?

parts... but not the whole internet

[protonbishop]

Plus it doesn't do mouseover/hover/tooltips -- pretty basic javascript. It's a cool device, but I find I have to re-engineer my websites to fit the iPhone's capabilities. Sure, the web may morph so that it will fit onto the iPhone, but for now I agree with the original article.

Governement? Not so much...

[KokorHekkus]

The Advertising Standards Authority is the independent body set up by the advertising industry to police the rules laid down in the advertising codes. The strength of the self-regulatory system lies in both the independence of the ASA and the support and commitment of the advertising industry...

Source:http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/about/

Archie, gopher, WAIS

[theurge14]

The iPhone App store better get cracking on those Archie, Gopher and WAIS clients.

It doesn't raise those issues

[Hektor_Troy]

This raises an interesting issue of where do you draw the line between essential and non-essential features of websites. What should the web look like? Should government authorities be the ones making that decision?

That isn't raised unless you think it's quite alright to claim that a Prius is an "all terrain vehicle" (as long as 'all terrain' doesn't include deep mud, steep unpaved hills and stuff like that).

This isn't about the government making the decision that "this or that is an essential feature of websites", it's about Manufacturer A claiming that Product B can do Feature C when obviously it cannot do Feature C but only a subset of that feature.

Lying to sell your products is not allowed in the UK. It may be in the US or elsewhere in the world, but this is about the UK. And in the UK they have this pesky law about not claiming your product can do things that it cannot do.

Re:It doesn't raise those issues

[Anonymous Coward]

That isn't raised unless you think it's quite alright to claim that a Prius is an "all terrain vehicle" (as long as 'all terrain' doesn't include deep mud, steep unpaved hills and stuff like that).

As long as you agree that an SUV doesn't qualify as 'all terrain' either because it can't plow through a dense forest or go up Mount Everest.

This isn't about the government making the decision that "this or that is an essential feature of websites"

It probably is. 'All terrain vehicle' doesn't mean a vehicle can navigate all possible topography. The ASA objects because the iphone doesn't fit its own definition of all parts of the internet.

It's not 'governmental rebuke'

[Anonymous Coward]

The Advertising Standards Authority is an independent advertising industry body; it is not government funded, and is not a 'government authority'.

Re:Who misses flash?

[jmauro]

It does not play "flash" YouTube videos. YouTube on the iPhone is a custom client app that does not use flash at all. It won't even play all the videos YouTube has to offer only the ones that can be accessed in h264 format so the app can use the iPod video decoding software/hardware to play it with their custom interface (flash only videos will not play at all).

ASA is not a "government authority"

[Candid88]

"Should government authorities be the ones making that decision?""

The Advertising Standards Authority is not a government authority. It was established by the Advertising Association, a trade body representing (from the wiki) "advertisers, agencies, media and support services in the United Kingdom" The ASA's introduction on wikipedia reads:

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is the independent self-regulatory organisation (SRO) of the advertising industry in the United Kingdom. The ASA is a non-statutory organisation and so cannot interpret or enforce legislation. However, its code of advertising practice broadly reflects legislation in many instances. The ASA is not funded by the British Government, but by a levy on the advertising industry

This is how most media watchdogs in the UK are run. Important facts like this should really be checked before making very flawed summaries. For if Apple wanted, they could simply ignore the ASA's ruling. Most carriers would probably refuse to run the adverts, but it's most certainly not a "government decision".

Re:Should we leave it up to the government?

[LMacG]

> "I have here a coffee mug. It gets all of the internet [for my particular definition of all of the internet]".

I'll bet your coffee mug runs Java, though, something the iPhone can't do.

Re:Ubuntu doesn't support the Internet either

[EvilNTUser]

Has Ubuntu created an advertising campaign where it implies that it's the only operating system that works properly on the internet, despite the fact that many others have more solid support apart from the user interface?

Re:iphone sucks

[mr_mischief]

It turns out that it's not much different from the iPhone in the US, then.

Re:Somewhere, a bridge is missing its troll...

[Neon Spiral Injector]

OK, it's up.

Bollocks.

[Karellen]

The iPhone can access flash and java content perfectly.

That it can't render it is a different argument entirely. It's particularly specious for proprietary shite like Flash which subverts the whole paradigm of the web being built around open protocols and formats.

Jeez, I suppose my Linux/PPC box can't access "all of the web" because fscking Adobe haven't been gracious enough to release Flash for it yet, and Gnash doesn't work perfectly on all flash "content".[0]

Utter bollocks.

[0] "content" in used here its loosest possible sense, which includes "effectively content-free content".

Re:Who misses flash?

[spun]

Do you think the government is defining what the Internet is in this case? Or are they simply taking the commonly held definition and applying truth in advertising laws? Why, exactly, was the line about the government defining the Internet even included in the summary, in your opinion?

Text.

[B5_geek]

Essential web services?

ftp?
gopher?
ssh?
IRC?
NNTP?
SMTP?

Here is a better idea, if only there was a law that required any company doing commerce to design their "store/web-site" so that entry, egress, navigation, and information were easy to access by EVERYBODY regardless of physical ability. Or wait there is. ADA (US-Centric I know, but I am making a point so bear with me) states that even web-sites should use correct tags so Blind people can still use them. Text-to-speech an brail readers only work when there isn't crap in the way.

Heaven forbid an option to view/use the WWW in plain-text would exist. The only purpose all this eye-candy serves is to advertise something.

Proposal: make every web-design student use a text-only browser (like lynx) for the first 2 years of school.

The UK government DOES make that decision

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

Whilst the summary's nothing more than a troll (as everyone else has said, the ASA isn't a government authority) there is at least one area where it mandates something in this area - website presentation. It's in the "Disability Discrimination Act 1995":

(1) It is unlawful for a provider of services to discriminate against a disabled personâ"

(a) in refusing to provide, or deliberately not providing, to the disabled person any service which he provides, or is prepared to provide, to members of the public;

The link to the text of the law is here:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1995/ukpga_19950050_en_4#pt3-pb1-l1g19

It's usually interpreted as forcing web sites to be compatible with screen readers (used by the blind) and high contrast / large character screen modes (used by the partially sighted).

It'd be interesting to see what would happen if someone who relied on a screen reader decided to take a service provider who didn't provide an accessible mode to court. If it meant that more sites had a more easily accessible "just the text, please" mode I'd welcome it.

It's worth mentioning that Adobe apparently do have a go at making Flash content potentially accessible:
http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/flashplayer/

Puffery

[swid27]

Surprised this hasn't been brought up yet...

Does anyone know if UK law has puffery defined in its trade laws, and if so, the extent (if any) allowed?

I presume that puffery protected Apple from similar problems here in the States.

Re:iphone sucks

[The Great Pretender]

Actually, the government mandate here is protection of the consumer. In the UK the government has the right to request withdrawal and slap the wrist of any advertisement that is considered false or misleading. Do they do it all the time? No. In this instance the question was raised - Does the iPhone have all parts of the internet on it? and the irrefutable answer is no, thus false advertising and that advert needs to be replaced by one that does not make such broad claims. This was nothing to do with the government having any control over the internet.

The better concern should be why pick on Apple when some much other false advertising get through the system...

Re:iphone sucks

[dash2]

I am pretty sure the UK government has no such right. As others have pointed out, the Advertising Standards Authority is an independent industry body, not part of the government.