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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.
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!!!
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
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
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 ?
"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)
If I could give copies of my bread/salad/pies away and still keep the originals, why not?
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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"
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.
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