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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.
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.
If you're a programmer, give your stuff away for free. If you're good enough, people will make donations. If not, then what's the point of being a programmer? .js/.pkg/.exe or whatever, that can be passed around with no problems.
If you give it away for free, then people are free to make
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.
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
http://www.gnu.org
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox
http://www.ubuntu.com
Etc, etc.
If you're a farmer, give your stuff away for free. If you're good enough, people will make donations. If not, then what's the point of being a farmer?
If you give it away for free, then people are free to make bread/salad/pie or whatever, that can be passed around with no problems.
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
I think this is the first time I've heard someone as senior as [Redhat CEO] Whitehurst admit something rather profound: that open source solutions save money for customers by doing away with the fat margins for existing computer companies – and thus shrink the overall market.
Giving your work product away and hoping that someone will pay you for it ensures that you will make less money than people who demand fair pay for their work.
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 ?
Oh! THEIR app store. Now I get it.
So...in order to get an official app on my phone that app must be in the app store.
So...in order to get into the app store that app must pass Apple's moral police.
So...that would be censorship.
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
"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"
"'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.
If I could give copies of my bread/salad/pies away and still keep the originals, why not?
Dilbert RSS feed
Indeed, clearly he is free to go and download the app from someone else's store, and run it on his phone.
Oh wait... forgot this is Apple.
overlords
8===D
I don't think that "give it away and pray" is a good business model.
I don't think most people will pay if given the option to get it for free.
That doesn't mean that "free" can't be a part of a business model. The local Starbucks is regularly offering free samples, broadcast television is free to watch etc. This does mean that you are giving something away in order to add value to something else, or convince people to value something else which you do then sell.
This is where open-source has been profitable: sure the source code is free, but support costs money. I'm sure there are other ways and business models that will be invented, as an example Kickstarter which is really the opposite of give-it-away-away-and-pray: get funding commitments before you start work.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
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"
Giving your work product away and hoping that someone will pay you for it ensures that you will make less money than people who demand fair pay for their work.
Sell one time to ten corps at $1K a pop, or sign yearly $500 support contracts to 40 corps, your choice...
And as for "demand fair pay", much as the value of bits and Hz has dropped over time to about zero each, the value of a c compiler or text editor has rounded down to zero. Grousing about how text editors used to be worth $250 each and they still should today, is about as useful as grousing about how 4116 16 kilobit drams used to sell for about $25 each and they still should today.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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
I'm a researcher. I give the results of my research away for free (arXiv, personal webpage).
Yes, I submit it to journals that cost money, but you can get the results without going to the journals.
new sig
Didn't several music artists make more money by letting people pay what they thought was fair than setting a fixed price? Fair is what the market thinks is fair.
My kingdom for some mod points today. Bravo Sir!
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Let's See What Happens When Corporations Become Publishers
Aren't most publishers corporations?
I see nothing in the definition of "censorship" that requires it to be done by Government, or that it must be illegal to get round it.
I could make an official app of Ash-Fox and distribute it outside of the app store for jail broken iphones.
Oh well that's just great isn't it - you can still get it to work on a minority of phones that have been hacked.
No, this is still a criticism. And people are right to criticise Apple over it and encourage alternative platforms; just as people do when there's a criticism against Google, Microsoft, or whatever else.
For the app store, yes.
For the entire Iphone/Ipad platform, yes.
Not really, nobody is stopping you from showing off your applications, at worst, they're just stopping you from putting it on their store because they don't want it.
You mean: Apple is stopping you from showing off your applications on the Iphone because they don't want it. But you can always develop for another, better, platform instead.
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.
Good god, with some well-placed touch features, you could make MILIONS from all the fanboys...
and probably prompt Steve jobs to anounce a 15" ipad so the app can run "actual size" mode..
People, what a bunch of bastards
All our wieners in front of Steves face...
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.
You're clueless about art, son.
Free Martian Whores!
I do a variation on this to pay my mortgage and feed my cats...
I run airwindows.com and write audio software for musicians and mix engineers. Some of the earliest stuff, a decade ago, was GPL, and I continue to be willing to talk freely about pretty much anything (talking tech becomes a turn-off for musicians, so I don't often get into it as a rule)
What I did to start making (some) actual money versus 'no money' was this:
Pick out some of the stuff, including everything that was GPL, and make it 'free beer' free. Since it's all mine, anybody wanting stuff added to the GPL pool can have it for the asking- it becomes dual-licensed because I'm not actually drawing from the GPL pool. I ended up including source for the public domain FreeverbCJ, and RMSBuddyCJ is GPL- but when I did closed reverbs I didn't even draw on the PD Freeverb stuff, I wrote up a much less object-oriented framework from scratch based on general reverb concepts. I don't use graphics code so I didn't draw from RMS Buddy for anything closed.
Pick out some of the stuff to be closed, and put it out there in such a way that you basically pay for access to get the widget in the first place. Kagi has a nice little setup where they can sell digital downloads with URLs that are temporary- there's no one fixed URL given out. I also keep prices at maybe a fifth of what the big nasty copy-protect guys are doing, and consider sales to be a lifetime thing- I'll support what I put out so long as I'm alive to do it. I keep it real simple so I can do that- if Logic changes and breaks existing plugins, it's on me to make it right for everybody I've sold to, since I haven't given them the code to fix it themselves :P
Lastly, I passionately believe that selling closed source software has to be a 'pull' rather than 'push' model: some people seem to think because they can have an idea, people are OBLIGATED to pay them. I think that has to be earned. I think it has to be earned by behavior. I wouldn't pay for someone to come and kick me in the teeth, so why would I pay for someone to come and shut off my software or audit my shop to see if I'm taking more than I ought? What makes that THEIR bailiwick? (I'm talking of Waves and their raids on studios.)
My stuff's copy protection is the original source of access- Kagi charges for the initial download, there's no place (or shouldn't be) saying 'download anything, pay if YOU feel like it' because why should it be that easy when I've repeatedly worked with people over the years and given refunds if they made a mistake? The effect is the same (except I pay a fee on refunds and chargebacks), it's just that you don't get to have the full product just on a bored random whim. There are demos for that ;)
Once you do have it, I start looking like the open-source world again: there is no dongle, there is no serial #, the bit of software is just the bit of software. It's not even the unlocked demo- there is no unlock to the demo, the product is the same code with the demo stuff (an output muting at intervals) commented out and a recompile. It's a black box like most commercial closed software, but it's a box without locks or traps or alarms- it just sits there working, you can back it up, and the only thing that prevents people from widely filesharing my work is earned respect. I WILL not add stuff that would get in the way of a real user just to fight 'pirates' when I could give a sh*t and earn some of their respect instead.
I also have the following unusual attitude: digital stuff not being used doesn't exist. If somebody who doesn't mix downloads three of my best, costliest (alright, $60) plugins and puts them in their Components folder and then never mixes a song- as far as I'm concerned, there is no 'theft' because it's meaningless. It's the same with a lot of mp3 filesharing, with obsessive warezing- hell, I have legitimate books, legitimate programs I don't read or use. How much more with the guy who's a big collector and eeevil w@r3z puppy and
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?
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.
If you're an engineer, make stuff for others for free. If you're good enough, people will make donations. If not, then what's the point of being an engineer? If you give it away for free, then people are free to make replicas or whatever, that can be passed around with no problems.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
I could make an official app of Ash-Fox and distribute it outside of the app store for jail broken iphones.
yeah, and you could also make your app for hacked iphones running android (has been done). but that is not what we are talking about. we are talking about normal users.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
no not really
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
Yes, but if network neutrality is killed, the barrier to access all content goes from low to near-earth orbit.
http://www.xkcd.com/
I'm not doing this just to contradict you. But seriously, what kind of "art" is the art that people won't pay you to keep doing? From prehistoric times people only become artists if people payed to see their stuff. or if they had a rich uncle that put up with their s...stuff.
new sig
"...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."
I could make an official app of Ash-Fox and distribute it outside of the app store for jail broken iphones.
First of all, Apple considers jailbreaking a phone to be a DMCA violation. I'm not sure if this affects your ability to develop an app for one, but, given the mess that is US copyright law, it might.
Second, iPhone SDK itself has a number of restrictions (including e.g. the infamous "no third-party languages" clause) that apply to anyone using it, whether the result is published to the App Store or not. So even if you ignore the store, you're not (legally) free to do whatever you want.
But seriously, what kind of "art" is the art that people won't pay you to keep doing?
Exactly. If it's good, it will probably sell -- but not always. Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting in his entire life, to his brother, in payment for a small debt (something like $5 in today's money), yet he's considered by art historians to be one of the greats.
You don't think the Pope paid to have the sistine chappel ceiling painted? Hostorically, artists (who were merely considered "craftsmen" in ancient times) were commissioned by the rich. All of the great masters before the middle of the 18th century were paid for their art.
The GP was trying to say that artists should be beggars, and that's just bullshit.
Free Martian Whores!
I'm the GP :)
And I wasn't exactly trying to say they should be beggars. I was trying to say that they can avoid going through the middlemen (Apple in this case).
If they're good enough, then the "consumers" will pay so that they keep doing what they're doing.
Otherwise, they have to go through the middlemen, but then they can't really complain if a middleman refuses to distribute something.
I've already told someone in this thread: I'm a researcher. A PhD student to be exact; my advisor pays me to solve some problems. Once I have a solution to a problem, I am free to write any number of papers explaining it, and distribute some of them freely (he does need to have something in a peer-reviewed journal, because he gets his funding based on that). Am I a beggar? I don't care. Society created a system where I am being paid to generate something that I can then freely distribute.
With art, as you say, things are trickier. Because you can't objectively determine which artist should "have his grant renewed". But having your distributor say "I don't think your art is appropriate" when it costs nothing to distribute has to feel really weird.
new sig
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.
Well, that's entirely different then; you weren't being clear. You made it sound like the only true musical artists were the ones playing in a park with a tin cup. Increasingly, musicians are foregoing the middlemen (record labels) and self-publishing. They have more control over their work and usually make more money doing it.
And I'll agree that "art" for money's sake alone is usually garbage, and that often good works are ruined by corporate committees.
Free Martian Whores!
Normal users can get the official handset that supports the Ash-Fox application. I don't see a problem?
They're not required to get the iPhone.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I don't see the problem. It's not like anyone is even forced to get an iPhone.
I still don't see how people are forced to get the iphone instead of another phone.
Indeed, they don't have to advertise or link any application because you want it there. It's their store.
I don't know about better, but another, certainly. You can even create your own platform if you have the financial backing. I mean, just look at Google - from zero in the mobile market to now kicking asses of various long term mobile phone companies.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I wouldn't know. I am not a lawyer or even an armchair lawyer.
I remember when people were not using the iphone SDK to create applications on the iphone when it didn't have official 3rd party support for applications.
Sure you are, if you don't agree to the terms, don't use that and use something else. If this is so much of a problem, then developers and users will move to a more liberal system. However, seeing Apple's current dominance it seems that users are pretty comfy with Apple DRM, since they won't give up their iPhones over it.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I wouldn't know. I am not a lawyer or even an armchair lawyer.
I'm not a lawyer either, hence why I'm not saying that Apple is right there. I hope they are wrong, in fact. But they've made that claim, and they are known as a relatively lawsuit-happy company, so it's worth keeping it in mind.
I remember when people were not using the iphone SDK to create applications on the iphone when it didn't have official 3rd party support for applications.
Didn't it require jailbreaking? If so, see point #1.
If this is so much of a problem, then developers and users will move to a more liberal system. However, seeing Apple's current dominance it seems that users are pretty comfy with Apple DRM, since they won't give up their iPhones over it.
But of course users are comfy with Apple's DRM! After all, it's the same people who vote for slogans such as "please think of the children" and "OMG, terrorists! fuck the Constitution" when it comes to politics. Comfort and "safety" have overridden freedom in our society's consciousness a long time ago in virtually all spheres of public life, so why this should be an exception?
The problem I personally have with this is that, if iPhone model becomes dominant (it's already mainstream), then the rest of us will have to choose between freedom and convenience for real - like Linux users do today - and not hypothetically, as in most Apple fanbois' drivel.
Simply put, if 99% people are happy with a locked-down iPhone, then that's who the market will cater to - and any remaining niche solutions will either be prohibitively expensive, or not broadly available, or incompatible with media targeting mainstream.
On the other hand, a lot of iPhone users don't even realize that their platform is locked down. They don't know what applications they could have access to if not for Apple's restrictive policies. So educating them on that is a legitimate approach towards postponing the dominance of the "walled garden" model.
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.
You forget to mention that the former business model has a significant NRE with minimal per-copy costs, while the latter model requires hiring support staff for each of the 40 customers. A single engineer might be able to do the former as a profitable sideline, while 40 customers paying $500 each requires full-time positions for several people living in poverty.
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.
what kind of "art" is the art that people won't pay you to keep doing? From prehistoric times people only become artists if people payed to see their stuff
What?!? Most art is created by amateurs for their own pleasure (c.f. Emily Dickinson). The idea that something is worthwhile only if others are willing to give you money to do it is absurd.
It is also bizarre to me that you think the cave paintings at Lascaux were done by some sort of professional prehistoric artist. Humans have been creating art for pleasure, communication and learning for a very long time.
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JimFive
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
APNEWS has just posted an article saying Apple has reversed its decision on the censoring.
See: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20100615/D9GBTQFO3.html