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Apple Censors Ulysses App In Time For Bloomsday
Miracle Jones writes "Apple has censored a 'Ulysses' comic book app — just in time for 'Bloomsday' — because of a picture of Buck Mulligan's stately, plump cartoon penis. Not since Amazon removed digital copies of '1984' from people's Kindles while they slept has there been such a hilarious episode in the ongoing slapstick farce 'Let's See What Happens When Corporations Become Publishers.'"
This is why I bought an android. Every time I see a story like this it just makes me feel better about my choice
Is this really even a suprise? I thought it was well known that, in general, Apple will reject apps with nudity.
I mean, whats next, an article alleging that Google may, in fact, have ties to the advertising industry?
This is what happens when books are licensed rather than bought.
'Let's See What Happens When Corporations Become Publishers.'
Because the current crop of publishers aren't corporations?
This is different to Walmart deciding not to carry content its store owners find objectionable, how?
Apple can say "no penises on the store, even comic ones" just like network TV can say "no swearing before 9pm" or a store can say "we'll carry all of your products except that flavoured lube you make, it just doesn't fit with our image".
Also, I thought most publishers *were* corporations. When did it become ok to post troll articles as summaries? Oh wait, it's slashdot. Carry on.
Publishers weren't corporations before the iPhone?
OMG!!! Ponies!!!
Publisher/corporations have been corporations/publishers for a long time now and this sort of censorship is neither new nor limited to literature.
The internet gives everyone the option to publish without censorship; you want to publish through a corporation though, because you want their lovely money.
But it's true, their timing is impeccably poor.
Apple is not about what you want but what they think you want. So if you are not satisfied with the fine prints/ device itself DONT BUY MORE.
"Ohhh but its pretty" Then congrats you bought a device just for the looks... next time buy a cardboard box and glue a pic of it to the side.
I want 2x more width on the tires of my car... can i do it? Ups its not according to the law.....
If you're an artist, give your stuff away for free. If you're good enough, people will make donations. If not, then what's the point of being an artist?
If you give it away for free, then people are free to make txt/pdf/avi/ogg or whatever, that can be passed around with no problems.
new sig
I need Steve to tell me what i want.
This is ironic because Ulysses not only was the cause for stricter pornography laws in the United States, when it was first published not as a book but in serialized form, but it was also the book that was used to get the laws struck down. Although the Ulysses case itself never went to the Supreme Court, it did influence later cases that did wind up in the Supreme Court.
Maybe Apple could have an Ulysses app with all the nasty bits removed. Or better yet, a Bowdlerization filter that would transform any book into something absolutely harmless.
Is this really even a suprise? I thought it was well known that, in general, Apple will reject apps with nudity.
Yeah but illustrated nudity (and poorly at that)? What happens if I made an app that let you clothe South Park characters and you start with two peach colored circles with eyes and mouth on the top circle? What is that, child nudity?
...
I mean, uh, it's been ninety years or so since it was first banned in America and now here we are in 2010
I mean, whats next, an article alleging that Google may, in fact, have ties to the advertising industry?
A better analogy, in my opinion, would be an article discussing Google's ties to advertising inside MMOs. Slight twists on commonly known things are sometimes interesting. I find it interesting that artistic interpretations of nudes are rejected. Could you even have the Venus de Milo or Vitruvian Man on an iDevice app? This definitely shows they err on the other side of the millennium.
My work here is dung.
Why does Apple get to censor ANYTHING on my phone? It is MY phone, not THEIRS!
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
Let's See What Happens When Corporations Become Publishers.
And Random House, HarperCollins, etal. are what, chopped liver?
Steve Jobs, I believe having a good "sex life" means something entirely different than it does for the rest of us. Even me, a staid almost boring 30 year-something person with a long term partner has gotten on board with sexting, sex pics and other naughty stuff with gadgetry.
I would never even consider owning a telecommunication/internet device that came with somebody's seemingly arbitrary and contradictory moral strictures as the arbiter of what I may use the device for. Ownership of Apple products has always been about willing to go into their secretive walled garden but lately with the hostility and snarkiness that has been shown to both Apple developers and consumers the experience is more akin to living in Gaza.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Take away the low-volume college presses and self-publishing, all you have left is corporate publishing. The only difference is they've got far more experience than Amazon, Apple and other that offer electronic books, and much lower profiles.
But it's only in the past few years they've become retailers, like Apple. It's as if Walmart suddenly became a publisher and sold only its own books through its stores.
Such vertical integration can, and does, lead to monopoly.
--
BMO
This is different to Walmart deciding not to carry content its store owners find objectionable, how?
Apple is trying to become a primary conduit for digital media; if they succeed, then we are stuck with their censorship rules.
That's why people need to understand the danger that Apple poses now, before Apple succeeds in establishing a Microsoft-like monopoly over media, content, and apps.
just like network TV can say "no swearing before 9pm"
TV networks are forced to do that by government rules.
or a store can say "we'll carry all of your products except that flavoured lube you make, it just doesn't fit with our image".
Individual physical stores can't impose worldwide controls over products or content; those that do get big enough to do so are just as much of a concern as Apple is.
Just because other companies are sleazy and dangerous doesn't mean we should stop complaining about Apple.
One of the things that rules in favor of VHS was that Sony was forbidding the use of it's format (Betamax) for pornography... So all porn movies were VHS only... Betamax was superior but noone ever cared about it...
Could the same happen with the iPhone ? People choosing Android/Blackberry/Maemo/SymbianWindows Mobile over the iPhone because of this restriction on nudity ?
I would like to post my new app "Steve's Johnson" to the app store. Please tell me where I should put it.
Regards
Theolein
"To buy" a book versus "to license" it, I don't think you understand the concept. Granted, it was much easier to understand when books were hardcopy only. Back then, it was well understood that you couldn't just go to the local copy shop and have them make 10, 100, 1,000 copies which you then sold, or even gave away. Digital makes this process trivial. It is no longer thought-provoking (huh, a publisher sells these, maybe they'll object to my selling them or giving them away -- there is that thing about copyright) because it's so easy and appears so innocuous.
When you buy a book, you're buying the physical media -- the paper and cover/spine/jacket/glue/stitching, and also the ink covering the page -- for what that's worth. You're also buying the consumption of the words. You're not buying the words or the right to reproduce them. The same holds true with digital media. You're buying the right to consume the information contained within a particular ordering of bits, but you're not buying the information itself or the right to make even one filecopy of that information which you sell or give to someone else. (Yes, backups are fair use, no matter what anyone says.) I'm sorry, but you're just not.
In other words, whether hard or electronic copy, when you "buy" a book, you're really just licensing it, to put it in the words you used. There is no "bought."
This is why I like the book/record model of licensing. Buy this digital resource, and you can use or lend or trade it just like you'd do with a hard media book or record or tape in days of yore. The problem with "piracy" in the digital age is that enforcement of copyright is no longer strongly supported by the limitations of the (physical) media that carries the copyrighted information. To me, this is a true "middle of the road" licensing position.
Now, that being said, if I purchase "1984" and wake up one morning and find it missing, then discover the publisher I bought it from repossessed it, I'm going to be ticked off. If they've refunded my purchase price in full, I'll be quite a bit less ticked off.
One other thing. My limited reading indicates to me that when a digital media resource is allowed to be "shared" (even if that means copying), it seems to stimulate sales. If the objective is highest sales, which one assumes helps maximize profits, maybe lax copyright enforcement is the way for artists and even publishers to go in the digital age. When you think back to the way things worked 50, 75, 100 years ago, that's pretty amazing.
sigfault (core dumped)
The emerging multiple layers of filtering that is disturbing to me. An artist has an idea, it is then edited and tweaked by the publisher, it then is edited and tweaked by Walmart/Apple/Whoever. Use a search engine, and you have a nontransparent filter that makes choices for you like Google and Bing that give you press releases from BP/the government and others.
Install Linux and enjoy your freedoms without a distortion field, DRM, book removal or mass packet collection. :)
Time to take computing back from the multinationals and make it personal again.
Name and shame all their efforts to double dip, control or steal.
If they push back, it's a McLibel with web 2.0 updates
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Indeed, "Ulysees" was the scam Joyce composed after he realized his inspiration for writing was gone. The people who insist it has merit are idiots.
"'Let's See What Happens When Corporations Become Publishers.'"
Books, music, and games have been published by corporations for a LONG time. Somebody needs more coffee -- I'm glad I'm not the only one that doesn't do Mondays well.
Free Martian Whores!
Let's See What Happens When Corporations Become Publishers.
Hate to break it to you but most major publishers are corporations. I know you were trying to be witty and make a point but you might want to try harder next time.
Cares?
overlords
8===D
Steve's banning of iPhone porn apps from the store is a front. Steve is playing both sides of the porn coin here to make as many people as he can happy.
You can find plenty of iPhone compatible mobile porn websites. These same sites work on any just about other smartphone as well. And the porn industry doesn't need any apps in the app store, because they don't make money on apps, they make money on monthly subscriptions. Sure they would love some kind of free app to drum up more subscriptions, but they aren't bothered too much, they are used to this kind of discrimination. They are also used to their customers hunting them down via Google or clicking thru 15 ads.
It's like Betamax creating a bunch of corner stores and saying "you can't buy porn in our stores" but then being able to go to Joe's porn emporium down the street and get all you want. If Steve really was that concerned he'd have permanently turned on the parental controls on all iPhones. That would be how he would have to shoot his foot clean off, because then he'd have created the VHS/Betamax situation.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Yes, censorship is bad. So is the idea of Ulysses as a comic book app. Maybe next they can do Pokemon as an opera.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
hmmmm i think there will be a lot more of this sort of thing in the future.
apple have gone from selling hardware and an OS to curating what can be viewed on that hardware through their systems. its a huge shift and i think they'll be bogged down in this sort of thing for a while as more and more items get banned and then allowed or allowed and then banned. it doesn't feel very clear what is allowed and what isn't, it seems to be by a case by case basis with rules applied unevenly, which surely is a worry for content creators.
maybe all the publishing companies should get together and make their own app/magazine/book store with content available for iphone, android, windows mobile, nokia/symbian etc.
personally i find it quite depressing that the company that i have been buying computers from to make creative content has such a dim view of culture!
Only someone who has never EVER been inside a publisher would call them a corporation. Maybe something like Harlequin comes close but the more "serious" ones have profits as something that happens sometimes, maybe but what it is, they don't know.
It is most certainly never a "fleece them for every penny" operation like an Apple. No book publisher would use Foxconn because penny-saving is not what they do. Profit for a book publisher is at most something to fund the next costly failure with. A lot of them also feel they got a public duty and that rarely is the one that tells them to do absolutely nothing that might offend anyone.
It is something very different from a mega billion dollar company like Apple to do publishing from some proper book publisher where even the account wears open toed sandals. It is the difference between the accounts running the books and them running the company.
The proof? Far fewer problems with book censorship. Just count the number of books published with naked boobies involved vs iPhone apps with the same.
Boobies are a good indicator of censorship. And yes, censoring yourself is censorship.
We would do well to not have our culture controlled by gigant companies only intrested in the bottom line.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You want to know what I think? I think that this is what happens when deluded fan-children fool themselves into thinking that they have subscribed to a free and open environment. Not only is this not shocking, but technically, they paid for this, the gated, sterilized community that is Apple.
Let's See What Happens When Corporations Become Publishers
Aren't most publishers corporations?
Why are all the people that are so offended by this saying that it is bad because Apple is going to become some big publishing monopoly? They don't even have a device with a very readable display yet. The LCD becoming large and portable didn't make it any easier on the eyes than when it was on your desktop, or when it was large and portable on your laptop. Not to mention the established juggernauts Amazon and Barnes and Noble that would have to be toppled. Not to mention that content producers who want to have nudity will seek out publishers who don't mind it. It seems to me that the Apple haters have far more respect for Apple's products than even the Apple fanboys. I doubt very seriously that anyone who says "I love my iPad" is thinking, "I can't wait until it is the only way for me to read a book". I'm not sure whether it's just "the sky is falling" conspiracy theory on the part of the haters or not, but not even the fanboys have that much delusional confidence in Apple.
All our wieners in front of Steves face...
Most porn is legal on the internet, but laws exist which stipulate that the consumer must validate they are of age before seeing material considered harmful to children. Apple should display a content warning and ask for age verification before allowing costumers from downloading books like this. I also think it should be possible for the consumer to password protect e-books so their children don't accidentally get exposed.
I'm not a patron of porn sites, but recognize people will satisfy their appetites one way or the other.
demigod Steve is an uncultured pathetic little micromanaging dictatorial prick.
With high quality products.
While I'm under no delusion that my iPhone isn't the slave of demigod Steve's whim and will, that trade off is one I'm willing to accept (for the time being) to get a phone that doesn't have a shit-slow laggy UI. Every blackberry I've ever tried, and the Storm was the worst, had this inherent delay to every aspect of the UI that made the phone's quirks ever the more maddening. Also, and with notable exceptions to what I've heard about the HTC Evo (though the battery life is another story), Android phones haven't quite made it to the zero-lag UI state quite yet. Maybe in another couple years that will change.... at least it should, anyway. I'm hoping Microsoft has learned something from Apple, RIM, and others in that regard and will blow us away with WinPhone7.
At the very least, the iPhone does what Steve says it will do right out of the box. Android phones and blackberries, on the other hand, have managed to disappoint over and over, but quite notably they will do what you tell them to do. The average consumer prefers the former trade-off, whereas the average geek prefers the latter one.
In the end, just want to get my email, make phone calls, take pictures/video, and maybe play a game or two. Any smartphone will do that out of the box, but as it stands, the absolute best phone on the market is unfortunately the one that leaves a slightly bitter taste in the mouth of the informed device owner.
Ulysses was causing a sensation and inspiring others in the literary community when it was still only fragmentary and hadn't yet been published and banned in certain places. Major figures like Eliot, Pound and others read installments of the work and incorporated them into their general theories of literature before the sensational fight for its full publication. Because of its wide impact in the artistic world, it would definitely still be remembered today regardless of its reception by customs agents.
You do realise that publishers ARE corporations, don't you?
i am personally very depressed that a company that i have given lots of money to buying computers to create content has such a dim view of culture!
The fact that Apple and Amazon.com are both corporations is irrelevant. It's a safe bet that all or nearly all major publishers are corporations. The issue is how both of these companies have tried to control the type of content that can be viewed on their devices. This is especially interesting in Amazon's case, considering that they have no difficulty selling paper books with objectionable content. It's only when that content started showing up on their devices and there was a perceived impression of liability did they start having a problem with it. This would probably also be the case if CD, DVD, and Blueray disks were only produced by one manufacturer. That company, being the only source for for the disks, would then have a perceived responsibility to the content of their product, even if they played no role in the production of that content. The solution should be obvious; ultimate control of the software on these devices needs to be the responsibility of the consumer. Only then will we regain the freedoms that make devices like the iPod, iPad, and the Kindle great. Interestingly, it's quite well known that the reason that both VHS videotape and IBM personal computers were so successful was because their licensing terms were both reasonable and affordable. Because of that freedom both of those products were allowed to grow beyond the confines of their original designs. What Apple and Amazon are doing is trying to control the hardware, software, and the content that appears on their devices. This is classic Command & Control behavior. Remember those two words: Command & Control. You will see and hear them again. Command & Control describes a managing and organizing style that seeks to manipulate both the product and the customer. Companies that behave in this manner should be avoided whenever possible.
"Causing a sensation and inspiring others in the literary community" isn't my idea of a ringing endorsement. At the risk of being rated flamebait again, I could take a dump in the middle of the street and cause a sensation, that wouldn't make it good literature.
Joyce's groundbreaking "Stream of consciousness" style is to most normal people simply incomprehensible. I was tortured by Portrait of the Artist in High School, couldn't make it all the way through Ulysses, and was spared Finnegans Wake. Heinlein's description of modern art as "Pseudo-intellectual Masturbation" applies very well to Joyce.
Yes, but if network neutrality is killed, the barrier to access all content goes from low to near-earth orbit.
"...I was a CEO of Apple no when I put the iPad in my hands like the Apple customers used or shall I wear a black turtleneck no and how he submitted the Ulysses app and I thought well they can't show a penis and then I asked him with my email to ask again no and then he asked me would I no to say no my Apple CEO and first I put my reality distortion field around him no and drew him down to me so I could remind him of the terms and conditions of the App Store no and his heart was going like mad and no I said no I won't No. "
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Poor little Apple fanbois feel all sad and hurt if you point out that their demigod Steve is an uncultured pathetic little micromanaging dictatorial prick.
No, they don't get all hurt and sad if you do that - they just start making excuses on his behalf. :)
Bow-ties are cool.
But what he really meant was "When corporations that, like, do other kinds of stuff become publishers".
Or "When corporations make the shift from not being publishers to being publishers" - is that quite clear enough?
Bow-ties are cool.
Fine, you disagree with his aesthetic. Doesn't mean that the novel doesn't appeal to plenty other people and would have been remembered nonetheless. Just attend a Bloomsday celebration -- they're arranged in a surprising amount of cities, and they draw all kinds of normal, everyday people you wouldn't imagine to pursue modernist literature.
Say what you like about Benito, but he sure gets the trains running on time (*).
(* Yes, I know he didn't.)
Watch this Heartland Institute video
de gustibis non disputandem est.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I used to be part of the Mac community, and trust me, they're often a lot harsher about Jobs' dictatorial actions than you are.
APNEWS has just posted an article saying Apple has reversed its decision on the censoring.
See: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20100615/D9GBTQFO3.html