Apple changes App Store policy on 'overtly sexual content' - Page 3

Yep. Me too.

And ATT will be selling Android phones very soon. I have dust under the screen of my iPhone. As soon as ATT gets an Android phone that I would like to own, I'll get a Genius to give me a new refurb, and sell it on eBay.

I think it's very simple, anyone searching for the new iBooks for the iPad would have iBoobs returned in their search list. This must have really been a concern. So, until they can fix the searching engine to filter out all that nasty stuff, they will most likely just cut it out altogether.

I for one don't mind keeping my iPods, iPhone and iPads porn-free, my kids are always playing around with these devices and it's good to know that it's a safe place for them.

If Apple allowed adult content, that would be the number one selling category in no time and change the way people view these devices and Apple.

I don't think it's Nazi-ism to disallow this content. Nazi-ism was all about genocide, fascism and a master race of Aryan overloads. People who throw that term about willi-nilli are idiots.

That seem to be Apple's SOP: They can't figure it out, so they just eliminate it.

I never said it did.


Again, I never said it did. The Apple iTunes store is currently in 96 countries. What evidence that this is only 'American' sensitivity that caused this thread?


Who is saying they are being forced.

The fact is that a significant number of users are complaining, and that nobody that I have ever heard of except the store owner, wants to see an XXX-Rated video store in their neighborhood.

One of Apple's primary audiences for the iPod and iPhones is kids. Most of their iPods are paid for by their parents. Even their iTunes Store accounts are as well.

To suggest that putting an Adult Section in the iTunes store would satisfy everybody is ludicrous.

Apple is a corporation that has rightfully decided on how, what, where and when it can sell its products. If Apple is wrong, their sales will suffer and their shareholders will demand change. I can't for the life of me imagine that either will every happen; or getting an XXX-rated section into your local high school library.

You know, Apple wants to keep a squeaky clean appearance for the public. They don't want some stupid running this app on the subway for all to see. It is not good for Apple. Their public relations guys hopefully had a say in this. I support Apple on this. All you complaining freedom-loving guys out there, grow up!

Why don't they just add two black mouse ears to the iPad for handles- problem solved.

Soon, I hope!

No I don't think there is an absolute disconnect between adult entertainment and child porn, and neither did I imply this disconnect. In fact I mentioned sexual predation, not child sexual predation, and certainly not child porn.

I will reiterate: to link the consumption of adult entertainment to sexual predation would be just plain stupid.

Specifically, there is no evidence linking the viewing of adult entertainment (pornography or erotica) with sexual predation of any kind, let alone child sexual predation. This is not the argument that you have argued against.

That there is (spurious) evidence linking the viewing of child pornography to child abuse says nothing of the link between consuming legal adult entertainment and sexual predation of any kind. I would suggest that anyone who is interested in looking at child pornography already has a sexual desire for children, which is something that society does not yet have adequate measures to address or control.

That "child pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry" or that "approximately one fifth of all Internet pornography is child pornography" says nothing about the link between consuming legal adult entertainment and any involvement with child pornography, let alone involvement with child sexual abuse.

I would strongly refute the implication that making adult entertainment available in any way legitimately aids or abets child sexual predation.

I still think it's funny that you can find the SI Swimsuit application, which has content at least as bad or worse than any of the banned apps. I support Apple keeping any image they want, and enforcing any rules they want. It would just be nice if the rules were the same for SI and small developers--and actually spelled out.

Why your constant insistence on conflating adult entertainment with child porn? Surely you are watering down the absolute horrendousness of child porn by lumping it in with adult entertainment under the general heading "porn"?

Honestly, you have no class and I pity you for your comment. Freedom is wonderful when it is not abused, and to protect it from abuse so that others may enjoy it, you establish laws that are based on moral principles and virtues. Many which you ignorantly enjoy today! If Apple has a philosophy about how it runs the company, they are in the complete right to do so. In my opinion, it is honorable what they are doing.

Stop being a blind and ignorant base head, I feel so sorry for your children with that attitude.

I disagree. That my rights are not being infringed does not say anything of the ethics or morals of the situation. I believe censorship is immoral in most instances, and thus I am opposed to it regardless of whether it affects my rights.

Most are not telling Apple what they should be selling, they are arguing against Apple's decision to censor. Suggesting that a company act in a more responsible manner is not the same as mandating what they can and cannot sell.

I agree. And no one is discussing whether they can or can't do anything. It is (was) a discussion on the ethics behind that decision.

Then I would suggest that you tell that to the authors who stated,

Quote:

…predators often send adult porn to children to desensitize them from sexual content and child porn to show the child that other children are sexual; sending them a message that it is okay. http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:...&client=safari

Or an FBI Congressional Testimony: http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress...bach050102.htm

If you go back, you will see that my original issue was in reference to a comment that Apple should create a ""Backroom" Adult Category" like that would prevent children from accessing 'overtly sexual' content.

I don't like the new Apple overlords.

Government policy in most parts of the world is about letting adults decide for themselves what's reasonable, with protection for minors. It's a system that works very, very well in accomodating liberty and choice. Apple could do a lot worse than understand this and ensure that their rules match the real rules which were passed by our representatives in Congress, as reflected by us all as constituents.

The real hilarity in the article is the official letter from Apple, in which they suggest in all lawyerly professionial seriousness that, perhaps... the developer wishes to re-write "Wobble iBoobs (Premium Uncensored)" so that it's not about... jiggling breasts?

Are you suggesting that the U.S. Supreme Court would overrule Apple's decision? And where does the American Constitution support such findings now?

As one highly learned in this field (World Political Sciences), I would be pleased to read for that matter, anything at all that to support your contentions.

Remember, the Apple iTunes App Store isn't just about the U.S.

That made me chuckle too. I bet the kid at Apple who sent out the letter was smirking at that, as well.

Keep the name. And make it into an adventure game, something about dealing with the policies of some fruit company....

Apple, being a private company, has every right to do this. We, as consumers and citizens of a free country, have every right to buy/not buy/boycott/celebrate the iPhone, but we also every right to criticize Apple's decision on any rational basis, regardless of our consumer decision of buying or using the device. Apple is censoring content - and they have every right to do that, just as anyone has the right to criticize their decision and call it censorship. But just because you own/use an iPhone doesn't mean you've forfeited your right to criticize its manufacturer - you just can't sue them. I'm sure they were already banning hard-core/snuff/child porn from the iPhone and nobody raised a stink - although anyone would have been accurate to call that censorship as well; that's just censorship with a different standard that more people agree with.

It's not censorship in the same way that authoritarian governments censor, but it is private, self-censorship, which the private-enterprise system supports and, it's likely, the overwhelming consensus is that we do support certain standard of censorship - especially against illegal content. E.g., there are no apps (or legit web sites) for finding the nearest cocaine dealer. But did Apple draw the line at the right place, or did they go too far? Jiggling boobs "offend" some people and may be inappropriate for children under a certain age whose parents believe jiggling boobs might upset their children (I guess). OK, well, how about gay dating services? Patently offensive to a huge number of people in this country and around the world who would also argue that exposure to such a forum would damage their children in some way - and Apple would have every "right" to remove this content on the same basis that they made this decision. And the public would have every right to celebrate this or call it censorship and discrimination against a minority (a minority protected in certain ways in certain parts of the country but also sanctioned against by the federal government and many local governments). Don't care because you hate gays? God bless you; how about mixed-race dating? Or cross-religion dating? Or Jews-only dating? Or atheist-content apps, or fundamentalist-Christian or Muslim or Hindu apps? Plenty of people find much of what fundamentalists say as patently offensive - how about censoring them? Video games involving shooting machine guns at Arabs might be considered offensive and damaging to children - how about removing that content?

I wouldn't want there to be easy access to hard-core or snuff or child porn apps, but there are laws against two of those and easy ways to block child access to the rest. Jiggling boobs are perfectly legal and, objectively, harmless to adults if viewed in private (and content delivered to a privately-owned device is private). If your adult sensibilities are offended, avert your eyes - a enforced puritan experience in a public forum is an oxymoron. And although the app store isn't technically a public forum, it's certainly presenting itself that way most of the time. If parents are concerned about inappropriate, but legal, content being delivered to their child on an iPhone, responsible parenting means tightly monitoring and censoring the content themselves, or they can replace the iPhone with a device not capable of delivering the entire internet. Apple censoring jiggling boobs is just taking the role of parent off of parent's shoulders. They have every right to do coddle that market, despite that it looks asinine (to some), but anyone would be correct in calling them out for excessive censorship on behalf of lazy parents and puritans.

Ha!

That's the first thought I had also. This is so "Disney-esque" it's funny.

To those that don't see a problem with this, you are missing the point entirely. It's not to do with whether Apple should or shouldn't allow "indecent" content, it's the problem of who gets to decide what's "decent."

For instance naked boobies is totally okay in most countries around the world excluding some really backward third-world places, some uber-religious nutbar countries like Iran, and the USA. The boobies app is being removed because to the average, religious, American, it's considered "adult," but Apple is a world-wide company now. It's ridiculous to suggest that one of the countries with the most backward and old-fashioned moral stances should decide what is good for the rest of the world. It's haughty, condescending BS. It's just wrong no matter how you look at it.

Apple's app store is a world wide phenomenon, and it's a single gatekeeper. There are no other places to go for apps and that changes the situation significantly. If Apple allowed some other way to get apps on your iPhone, then the issue would go away, but as long as they force you to go through the app store, they should not be censoring what you can and cannot see. Especially since this determination is being made based on the individual morals of a very few individuals at the helm of an American company.

I find it funny that everyone gets so upset if Apple bans a browser or a video streaming app (as if it's tantamount to purest evil for them to do so), when in fact they have practical business reasons behind the move. Yet when they do something like this, which is clearly orders of magnitude worse, people mostly just shrug and say "whatever." This kind of morals-based censorship, (that has no logical reason behind it) and no justification is the very worst kind of censorship and the very worst kind of "closed" system.

Worse, this will most likely give a huge boost to the jailbreaking community just as it was fading away. Up till now, the main reason to jailbreak your phone was to steal apps, with a small percentage doing it for pure zealotry, or because they have a major geek-on for some tricky thing that Apple wasn't letting it's customers do.

Now however, huge numbers of relatively normal, non-techie users that aren't interested in stealing apps will have an excellent reason to get involved in jailbreaking their phone.

I think this is a huge mistake for Apple to go down this road of moral gatekeeper. The store has a ratings system, and it works. If a customer wants to buy apps with naked boobies in them, Apple is simply foolish to try and stop it.

Apple should actually desire to be (secretly), known as the platform with the *best* boobies app, not the one platform that Walt Disney would approve of.

No 'Overtly Sexual' content on iPad?

Four words come to mind: Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.

Why are you quoting something that was not written?
He wrote "couldn't care less" meaning he does not care at all. :Could care less" means someone does care.

"The rest of the internet"?? In other words, there are nothing but porn sites on the "rest of the internet"?

Odd, as I never see any, with my usual 20-40 tabs open, with scarce a genital or sexual reference to be found on my browser unless I go and look for them. I guess that's all you look for, then.


For starters, how about because they've made themselves the only outlet for content for a multi-purpose device on which you can visit porn sites, take erotic pictures and videos, store and play porn videos transferred to the device, "talk dirty" on the phone and do SXTING with??

If I buy a DVD player at Best Buy, I can go to another store if my tastes run to erotica to buy DVD's and it's no reflection on BB or Samsung.

So why just censor apps, since every other function of the instrument allows all the sex you can digitize? I have a feeling it's an unintended side effect of closing out other potential app vendors which has created a subsequent perceived need to preserve Apple's image, but in the end, no matter, this is hypocrisy (and faux censorship) through app monopoly over all who want to embrace the Apple ecosystem.

That is, Apple can sell a porn-accessing/creating/transmitting/receiving device without blushing, while still claiming "purity" by not being a vendor of same - and they're not just keeping porn apps off, they're keeping all apps they don't like off.


Or much less.


Actually, Salt Lake's a blue island in a red sea. All kinds of sin biz here!


I believe it was Lenny Bruce who said that American couples only feel really married when they're fighting, because growing up they always saw their parents doing that, but seldom expressing any physical intimacy.

And of course it's more healthy for kids to see avatars being torn and blown limb from bloody limb than a lovely human breast.


I won't hesitate. The rationale for the App Store model is technical, not moral. The notion that "you can only buy apps from us" was because it ensured that the device worked properly by controlling multi-tasking, resource usage, API calls, optimizing battery life, preventing crashing, etc., and while limiting, I could see that. And people who want to go beyond those limits and have some geek cred can jailbreak - although (as I understand it) detected jailbreakers are banned from buying at the app store, which I find considerably more dodgy to justify - prohibiting people from paying Apple for real apps because they did something Apple didn't like which doesn't threaten Apple.

This is a whole new universe where Apple becomes not the technical judge, but rather the moral avatar to the entire userbase around the world. Apple users have always endured the taunts of cultists, but now Apple seems to have assumed a religious censor status the Pope can't muster!

And there are certainly safeguards Apple can easily include that provide as much protection from such apps as is considered sufficient for analog society and the rest of the digital world.

YouTube's no better. They leave highly inflammatory racist and rants against members of certain religions, as in really foul and totally discreditable stuff, up forever despite multiple complaints, and all language is fair game, but swing into bluenose action with dispatch at the mere suggestion of a nipple. And as far as I know, ditto for facebook.

However, on the same hardware you can easily go to sites where racier fare is allowed.

To make the point clearer, imagine (because of "multiple complaints") that Adobe built a breast and penis detector into Photoshop that would close and delete any image in which such human body appurtenances were found.

Sheesh.


Well said!

The problem is if you use Apple's products, there are no other sources to go to.

Also, ...

- Nudity is not necessarily "porn" and they are banning nudity here, not "porn"
- There already exists a rather healthy and draconian ratings system to keep the Christians happy.

What if Steve Jobs converted to Islam overnight and then banned all apps that showed women's faces because of course that would be "immoral" to him then also? This would be clearly "wrong" and everyone would protest against it simply because it doesn't fit with what the average American thinks is moral or right. But why is it that what Americans think is immoral or indecent gets to be the deciding factor? There are people with iPhones in Iran, lots of them, what about their morality? There are also people with iPhones in Europe where naked boobies are on TV and seen on the beach any day of the week.

I'm not a fan of porn, I find it dull and stupid for the most part, but this is just wrong no matter how you slice it. People have a right to determine for themselves what they watch unless you can prove there is some material harm involved. For instance no one supports child porn really because of the obvious bad effects it has on children. That's just common sense and there are real, factual, logical reasons for such bans.

Banning nudity because "someone might be offended," is not the same thing at all. It's s decision made completely on the basis of religion, and a "lowest common denominator" mentality.

Apple is essentially saying here, "We don't care what the rest of the world thinks, in the USA, there are people who will be offended by this stuff, so even though it's already in the back room of the store, we are just going to ban it altogether so as not to have the religious zealots picketing outside the store." They are caving to pressure from a minority and knee-capping the rights of the majority, based on nothing at all.

Darn ... I was so looking forward to iLeisure Suit Larry.

When you sign up for itunes you should be able to put your age in there. If you are under 18, you don't get to see the adult categories, if you are over 18 you should have an option to opt out. Personally I don't mind seeing those apps in the appstore, cause we are not china and won't sensor this type of content. I hope.

Disgusting. Apple/AT&T just lost my family's 5 iPhones/accounts. I refuse to support a closed platform that enforces censorship.

One Nation, Under Shame.

safeway still won't stock a lifesize sex doll. Stores can sell what they want or not sell what they don't want.

There is a war going on here on earth that started before this world existed. Its a war between right and wrong. Today this war is more sophisticated and well funded by those that support the Wrong side than ever before.

The fact that Porn is a multi billion dollar industry does not make it right. Porn has no place in society. It is on the Wrong side of the war that competes for our lives. Porn devalues societies, devalues women, breaks up marriages, breaks up families, and is an addiction that is harder to break than heroin.

Bravo Apple. Porn or any overtly sexual material is not wanted or needed in the App store.

http://www.safefamilies.org/sfStats.php

Good riddens, we don't need porn filling up the app store. There is no reason to have an application when all it does is point you to a web site or images/video. People can create a web app for that & then I don't have to sift through porn apps while trying to look for apps that are actually functional to me. I actually wish Apple would make it so that web apps appear in a different category from apps that actually utilize features of the iPhone system.

Apple really never should have allowed such apps to clutter up their store, then they wouldn't be facing the PR nightmare of both explaining to parents why the apps still appear for their kids when age restriction is set and explaining to developers why they are pulling content they previously allowed. This is one area of their family friendly persona they really fell down on.

So much better put & to the point then how I stated it, bravo! Agreed, people whining about loosing access to porn apps on the iTunes store can just create their own web apps from sites on the web. Look at it this way, now you won't have to pay a few bucks just to see something you probably could have found elsewhere for free.

I hope they remove those pointless "BIGGEST BOOBS" and "PASTIES BOOBS!" apps as well.

Sure they can act as the supreme moral authority and decide what is decent and what is not good enough for us in their store. That's their right. But I am really surprised the Apple Inc. is not generally ignored by the public for that stance.

So, Steve, keep on censoring what's good for us, but stick your iPhone into your iArse, not going to buy it.

BTW, Apple should really consider removing Safari from iPhone. This is really porn hub, why not to be consistent and remove this before "complaints" start to flow again. And you won't have that pesky Flash question in front of your eyes anymore.

Banning porn from AppStore won't make your or any other family "safer". People who believe in such bullshit are really reason why America is in such a crisis. Hypocrites everywhere.

To decide what books you want to carry in your store is not censorship, the way keeping them out of a public library system would be. Don't confuse the two.

NO. Apple is responding to the expressed standards of its community.

If you are juvenile enough you need boobs on your phone just use mobile safari and find it on the web.


Again, they are responding to their community of users which has different standards for music which you have to buy to hear these "harmful" songs or videos. However degrading some music/video content, it has separate artistic merit how ever little.

These "boobies" apps only exist to titillate.

Apple tried to have a more liberal policy on this class of Apps but the userbase rejected it and wanted higher standards.

That *was* sarcasm, right?

Only governments can censor.

They never allowed hardcore porn apps either so why did you ever get your iPhones if access to "boobs" is so important to your family that the uncensored web alone isn't enough to fill your needs?

Get real.