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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.'"
There's no app for that.
Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.
Will someone please link to the part of the website for that tabloid that contains the alleged prurient content? I would like to verify myself to determine if the offending content warrants censorship. Let's not be hasty about condemning apple for their possibly righteous behavior without examining very carefully page 9 to see if it offends our sensibilities.
Yet another SLASHERTISMENT. I know, porn, geeks, porn, geeks... Seriously, why is this shit on Slashdot?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Now as much as I don't like Apple, I must say that Apple is free to enter and to not enter into contracts as they please.
If he doesn't like that then he can make his own phone and his own app store, or take his business to Apple's competitors, such as Android.
I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
If he doesn't like that then he can make his own phone
Mobile phones are a patent minefield. Without a patent war chest of its own to cross-license, a new entrant in the mobile phone business isn't likely to get far.
How do you define "artistic value" ? As Andres Serrano has shown, one man's bodily fluids is another man's art. Some would argue that the human form is a work of art. Others are ashamed of it. So who is wrong, and who is right ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
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.
The publishers agreed to Apple's license agreement before they submitted the app to the App Store. If they didn't bother to read it then too bad for them, but don't go crying to the government over it. There are plenty of other methods other than the App Store to get the magazine on the iPhone.
The App Store approval guidelines have been on Apple's developer website for a while now. Here's a snapshot from the day they were first published.
http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/app-store-guidelines.pdf
>> a tabloid with 'racy' pictures that don't even pretend to have artistic value doesn't sound like a good trial case.
Ignoring your ignorant comment where you go on imposing your definition of artistic values, there still seems to be a very minor case of Hustler v Falwell - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell
From TFA: for allowing other iPad apps (lists "German paper Bild and British The Sun") to do what they have been prevented from. Duh.
Your definition of the word "The" seems to be faulty.
[An example of likely] App Store approval guidelines have been on Apple's developer website for a while now[, but are not guaranteed to be, or even often, accurate].
FTFY
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.
They don't apply the same rules to everyone. They've approved Playboy and Sports Illustrated booby apps while removing others from the store.
~One would assume that if Apple were an 'also-ran' in the pad market, they'd only be too eager to publish gossip, celeb news and porn over their more prudish competitiors.
It's Apple's fucking market, not anyone else's. These guys are welcome to use an alternate delivery system or put their rag out for any other device. This is horseshit.
Ah, but owning a market place does not give you absolute power to do with it as you please.
:-)
In civilized countries there are rules to govern trade and business. I don't know which African Banana republic you live in, but in the US and the EU, businesses fortunately have to follow rules set forth by society - rules designed to ensure and enforce out liberal freedoms, free trade, fair markets.
As such, Apple is NOT free to discriminate other businesses, engage in unfair trade practices, discriminate ethnic minorities, etc. They also must adhere to consumer protection laws, and other national regulation.
Please read up on "real world", and "western culture" on Gooogle or wikipedia before you visit us.
Oh, and don't bring your horseshit with you.
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
What exactly is the tabloid suing for? Apple's policies are very well known, and I cannot believe he didn't know what the outcome would be before he submitted his app. Sounds like someone just wants come money and free publicity.
Haha. I LOL'ed at that statement. Shows a little about the way some people think of lawsuits :-)
:-)
There are no laws for "punitive damages" in Denmark from which the tabloid (Ekstra Bladet) can win any money. Not a dime.
The only way the tabloid stands to get money, is by being allowed to sell their app to their readers.
Yes. Really.
Free publicity? Sure, any media/newspaper loves that, but they wouldn't have gotten that if it wasn't for Apples lame and discriminatory way of handling their app approvals.
And Apples policies are certainly not "well known". Other large newspapers, and even Playboy, publish naked women through the appstore every day.
As you may well be aware of, Apples app-approval process is often criticized for seeming random, arbitrarily and without explanation. This is just another example in a very long list of similar cases.
With any luck, Apple will learn as time goes by.
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
To extend your analogy, it'd be like a driving test if:
* The rules were constantly changing, subjective and ill-defined, for example - drivers who annoy other road users will be rejected, drivers who have those awful dice in the front of their car will be rejected
* The rules were applied in wildly different ways to different test subjects
* Your tester communicated with you purely by sending different canned email responses to your actions
* You were retested every time you changed car
* With every test you got a different anonymous examiner, who appeared to have different interpretations of the vague rules of the test, but refused to explain them
You are not completely off. We just don't make it into laws in Denmark, but when US TV shows started being shown on Danish TV, worried parents called in and complained because of the beeps over offensive words. They argued that censorship is wrong and harmfull to children.
Then again. The racist party recently suggested in parliament that we should add topless girls to the citizenship test, apparently thinking that would scare off muslims.
I've never understood why Apple doesn't simply use a ratings system like movies or TV programs. They can have "inapproriate" content disabled by default and subject to age verification, while still profiting from the "perverts" who enable it.
You can see it with Wikileaks. They are under huge strain to keep their site up, at enormous cost. You can say what you want on the internet, as long as you can pay for the DDOS attack, the security and rape charges. Freedom of speech? Only if you can outshout the megacorp.
Some claim the TSA is hurting travel, but few are actually stopped from travelling and that only at great expense. A far more effective method of stopping people from travelling is to make it to expensive. A farmer who needs to spend every day tending his cow can't spend a week travelling the to capitol to make his voice heard. Only the rich farmer with plenty of staff can afford to do that. So the rich farmer is heard, the poor one is not. But EVERYONE is free to have their say in the capitol, nobody's fault that not everyone can afford to... just very handy.
Congress doesn't have to sign any laws to ban porn from the net. The public buys more and more devices closed of by public companies that do all the work for the christian puritans. How convenient and in return the government keeps the patent system in place that makes it impossible for a small competitor to get started without endless patent battles.
It is not just the web. Farmers have been sued for growing crops cross-polinated by accident with patented crops. Be a farmer as long as the mega-corp wants you to.
We are at fundemental risk to loose freedoms that we won't miss until it is to late.
Forbidden for Jews. Remember that one? Or "No blacks allowed"? Do you think every store that carried that sign was run by a racist biggotted asswipe? No, but if they didn't, then they wouldn't be supplied, couldn't get a loan etc etc. The power of the business to control society has grown enormously since then and we depend on it far more. Just think how depended you are on the bank system. How does a office clerk switch back to the barter system when the shit hits his fan?
The telephone companies were NOT allowed to censor the use of their telephone network. Hookers could NOT be prevented from getting a phone line. Why do we now accept that Apple does censor its service network? When does a service become a utiltiy? When do we not want our use of a public service to be restricted by a board director?
Apple and others are offering services that become so widespread they become common usage but still under control of a handfull of people with no public accountability. Your electricty manager dictates that you cannot use his electricity to watch porn. Turn of that computer NOW.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm much more likely to open an App than I am to go to my bookmarks and open a website.
Then put the bookmark on the home screen next to the apps.
You MUST use their App store to get apps.
Only if you are Apple's customer. It is currently not the case that you MUST become Apple's customer; instead of buying an iPhone you can buy a Samsung or HTC phone.
Hanging around here too long, one would begin to think that Apple forces people to buy iDevices,
What's the viable alternative to the $230 iPod touch in the market of portable media and game players with an app store? Google won't let an Android device officially access its Market unless the device meets requirements that appear unrealistic for devices in the iPod touch's price range, such as a GPS and camera. Archos makes the Archos 43, which works around this by running its own app store, but I've read reports that AppsLib has almost no selection. Besides, Best Buy and Sears didn't carry Archos 43 when I asked a sales associate.
Barbossa: First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement so I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirate's code to apply and you're not. And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner .
So, even if you think Apple has a monopoly via the iPod Touch, you'd be extremely hard-pressed (read: would not be able) to show that they abuse it (in a legal sense).
I would be hard-pressed because I lack dollars to hire a lawyer. But this tabloid might have a better chance to show that Apple is abusing a monopoly by rejecting an app because it has more kroner to hire better lawyers.