Slashdot Mirror
Racy Danish Tabloid May Sue Apple For App Rejection
the_arrow writes "In Denmark the tabloid newspaper Ekstra Bladet usually have scantily clad ladies on page 9. When making an iPad application, Apple of course rejected it because of that. However, Ekstra Bladet is not happy with that, and many sites report that Ekstra Bladet is thinking about taking Apple to European court for 'unfair censorship and anti-competitive behaviour.'"
Back in the days of printed stuff, there were thousands of outlets. If one barred a certain publication, it was no big deal. The public could buy it in the other shop down the road.
With e-publishing, there's massive consolidation that changes this situation. Amazon or Apple blocking a publication is *not* analogous to a shop choosing not to stock a publication.
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It doesn't matter how well known a company's policies are if it turns out they're against the law.
Do you think it's legal to sue a hitman for failing to follow through on the terms of his contract?
Are you familiar with the legislation regarding censorship in Denmark? It may be like "sexual assault" in Sweden.
No, you just have to open Safari, which comes with every iPad -- it's the perfect porn delivery system, and Apple provides it for free. In, fact, I'd go so far as to say that if you can't find porn using Safari, you're too stupid to reliably remember to draw your next breath.
As to Apple's unwillingness to put porn in the app store itself, that's simply distasteful -- Jobs imposing his limited, socially crippled idea of what an app store should be... on his (Apple's) app store. He's not preventing any content from reaching you -- any content you imagine can be put on a web site, and Safari will deliver it (and very well, too.) He's just pretending to be socially acceptable to the mentally challenged, that's all.
All Ekstra Bladet has to do to get those "racy" chicks to you is pop them on a web site; google will find them in about five minutes, and you can find them a second later. So in no way are you stymied, nor is Ekstra Bladet.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If everything is so peachy when you "just use the browser," then why have apps (or an app store) in the first place? Could it be that iPad apps provide services or user experiences that web pages (with or without HTML5 or Flash) don't?
You know, I'll be the first to say that Apple doesn't have to sell any apps in its store that it doesn't want to. If they're not interested in taking their cut from nudie pic apps (or nudie streaming video apps, or h-games, or what-have-you, the Next Big Thing in Porn), then that's their prerogative. But to say that there is only One True Retailer for apps, and that jailbreaking is against their Terms of Service, well, that's what stinks to high heaven.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
From TFA: for allowing other iPad apps (lists "German paper Bild and British The Sun") to do what they have been prevented from. Duh.
In all fairness though, I'd say there are too many mobile apps on many platforms that are really just a media redistribution app for a single media business, which is what this is. Having a native app that displays articles and images fetched from the internet seems a little contrived when there is a web browser built into the device. It's very different from games and other software that need local resources to a greater degree than can be used from a web page.
What? This is about Apple potentially having their App Store policies tried in European court, something that could potentially be a game-changer. But no, it must be a slashvertisement targeted at the millions of Danish Slashdot readers...
It also depends on whether Apple does significant business in Denmark/Europe or not.
Apple is welcome to use an alternate country.
Libertarians would do well to realize that if Governments are too weak and small, Corporations would become defacto governments.
Then a Corporation could tell people "These are my fucking private Company Towns and Roads, you are welcome to live elsewhere, if you don't like the way I do things".
If you say Corporations can't do that because the Government would stop them, well then that's why there's this case going on. In Europe at least the Corporations are not yet the final authorities on what is allowed or not, no matter what some EULA or Company Policy says.
Then it seems to me that one of the key driving forces for apps (if not the key force), is the ability of the provider to monetise their product. If there were a widely available and convenient to use (and secure) micro-payments system, perhaps we'd be seeing the same progress in web-apps as we are in Apps.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.