Id love an iPad dA app, it would totally breach the rules, sooo much awesome awesome art (nudie pics)
What's the point? Mobile app works fine for dA...
Social Capitalist, dreamer and wise enough to know I'm never going to grow up anyway... so not trying anymore.
Social Capitalist, dreamer and wise enough to know I'm never going to grow up anyway... so not trying anymore.
Excepting the erroneous opinion of religious prudes (mostly located in the United States)
And Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan. Should give an idea of where exactly the "free" United States of America stand on the scale of sociological freedom nowadays...
Social Capitalist, dreamer and wise enough to know I'm never going to grow up anyway... so not trying anymore.
Social Capitalist, dreamer and wise enough to know I'm never going to grow up anyway... so not trying anymore.
apparently people like Shiny more than they like their freedoms.
Microsoft taught you that back in the 90's. Not news.
Social Capitalist, dreamer and wise enough to know I'm never going to grow up anyway... so not trying anymore.
Social Capitalist, dreamer and wise enough to know I'm never going to grow up anyway... so not trying anymore.
Held liable by whom, for what?
This is just another brick in the wall of the garden. Seriously, Apple should wake up. I happened upon this article on Businessweek - "
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-16/why-i-might-ditch-my-iphone-for-an-android#p2
Being completely non-nonsensical with App Store policing such as evidenced in this article, Apple are only reinforcing their reputation for being restrictive and controlling. It will probably contribute to doing their sales more harm than good.
I didn't say anything about the Apple becoming Android. Telling the complainers and critics of the banned app to go fly a kite because It's a photography App and Nudes as a theme in art is much older than Photography - would not have made them Android, it would have just been showing some backbone.
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Lightening up and growing up, wouldn't make Apple Android, but it might slightly improve the walled garden reputation that is quite clearly affecting people's perceptions and buying decisions.
I wouldn't think it should get pulled at all, no more than I would think a Web browser should be. From hearing users characterisations of the site, I very much doubt the images are either illegal or porn. If you start bandying around silly words like 'indecent', much of art would be targetable.
Should Apple remove all e-book reading apps from the App Store as well, because they could be used with content such as Fifty Shades of Grey, The Story of O, etc, etc?
Obviously I think the same regarding Google. It should be up to the owners of the devices what they do with them, not the manufacturer.
The other crazy thing is the purported complaints don't actually appear to be about actual child pornography, but the 'possibility' such images might get posted to the 500px site, which would be in contravention of the sites policies and guidelines anyway and would be removed when noticed.
I have a huge issue with the way Apple does the 17+ rating, it is too blunt of a rating to really be helpful. It would be really nice if Apple had a separate warning & rating for content that could allow internet access from the 17+ rating so you could better rate these apps to the type of content they might give access too. I say this because I've run across several apps that have the 17+ rating purely because they can access the internet but there is nothing about the app that allows access to inappropriate material. Take for example some of the kidsafe web browsers that are rated 17+ purely because they access the internet, thus defeating the purpose of restricting content based on age rating. It's about time they re-visited this & fixed it, it's been broken for far too long.
So if I'm watching a movie where a girl is servicing a horse while a line of midgets take turns one after the other of plowing her from behind....as long as she has pubes it's 'art'?
Well consider me a purveyor of fine art then! 
I have a huge issue with the way Apple does the 17+ rating, it is too blunt of a rating to really be helpful. It would be really nice if Apple had a separate warning & rating for content that could allow internet access from the 17+ rating so you could better rate these apps to the type of content they might give access too. I say this because I've run across several apps that have the 17+ rating purely because they can access the internet but there is nothing about the app that allows access to inappropriate material. Take for example some of the kidsafe web browsers that are rated 17+ purely because they access the internet, thus defeating the purpose of restricting content based on age rating. It's about time they re-visited this & fixed it, it's been broken for far too long.
Indeed. It's funny that if you download Opera or some other browser for the iPhone and run the corresponding software updates you end up with pop-up alerts that make it look like you're just about to download some porn software or other adult content, meanwhile the factory installed Safari offers exactly the same access.
Maybe the entire iPhone should be X-rated...
Also, what about PhotoStreams? They can just as easily carry "objectionable" content as the 500px site or any other photography site, such as 1x.com.
What about Instagram and Hipster? Both have far more graphic content (yes, including penetration) and both are aimed at a younger crowd (the exact group that should not have access to this content). Far more harmful, yet Apple does nothing. This is hypocricy and discrimination in their purest forms.
500px provides a toggle to bypass nudity (fine art), Instagram and Hipster do not have a way to exclude pornographic material.
There is nothing correct about Apple's decision.
Basically, what boggles the mind is this:
Apple DOES have ratings on the apps, you CAN restrict apps according to age ranges.
Exactly WHAT is rated 17+ if not "explicit" content? I mean, what's the point of being able to download a variety of Kamasutra apps, but you can't download an app that might *possibly* be used to access *some* pictures that *might* be construed as being pornographic?
If 500px had put up its app as a 4+, 9+ or 12+ app, I'd totally understand Apple's reaction, but an app that has a 17+ restriction should not face further scrutiny unless it violates the law of the land. As long as porn is legal, and as long as the app is rated 17+, Apple should stand back. The people who don't want to be exposed to stuff like that can easily restrict app downloads to the 12+, 9+ or 4+ range, depending on how infantile they are. After all, this is the USA and not Saudi Arabia.
There's really no need for a corporate entity to be the arbiter of what constitutes good or bad taste outside their very own product.
Just imagine you buy a butter knife and it came with an EULA that prohibits you from using that butter knife as a putty spatula, or to spread oil paint on a canvas. Or you go to an art supply warehouse and the oil paint comes with an EULA that prohibits you from using the paint for nude paintings, because the owner of the paint manufacturer is some born again nut case. If you buy the damn knife, paint, iPhone, whatever, you should be able to do with it as you please, regardless if it's bad taste or not, that's why you pay for it; it's not a free loaner.
I'm sure someone, somewhere wrapped an iPhone in something and used the vibration mode for some other than the intended purpose. Is the Apple police going to knock on their door and confiscate the device?
Not really though, it's like the dialogs you get on websites "Are you over 18 - yes/no".
Well, I'm not aware how to bypass parental restrictions short of jail-breaking the device or something. And if you're not really a kid, and it's not your parent that set the restrictions, then of course, it's OK that you can click through: you have been warned, and you're a responsible adult.
The thing is, "real" art should not have any age restriction. Do you really think they stop kids from seeing the Acropolis in Athens or the Arthistorical Museum in Vienna or any decent art museum in the world, because there are nude sculptures or paintings in there? Art collectors all over the world have nude paintings in their living rooms, in full sight of creatures of all ages. Heck, until Ashcroft decided to drape a curtain over her, even the statue of Justice in de DOJ was a nude sculpture. You can walk into many catholic cathedrals and you see naked Adam and Eve on paintings. The whole point of age restrictions is exactly for when it stops being art and it starts being porn.
After all, tits are made for kids. Are they going to blindfold babies and tie their hands behind their backs before they can be breast fed? Or is it now child porn when parents take pictures of their 2 year old running naked on the beach? And what if iPhoto and Aperture start having nudity detection? Can't upload your private pictures to your photostream anymore or have the feds knock down your doors because of child porn because of some nude baby pictures on a photostream for relatives?
Someone in Cupertino please start having a brain, the situation is absurd.
Didn't know Apple, with the devil's symbol of the bitten Apple of Eve as corporate logo, is now run by the Amish or some other puritans...
I'm all for Apple not having porn in their store, if they allow for alternative sources of content download. If Google blocks porn in their store, then you can go to some other store. But if Apple wants to be the single source of content, they should then allow more liberal policies, provided things are rated according to the content. I have no problem with them banning people who try to sneak in software with a lower than applicable rating, but that was not the case from what I understand.
You may not be aware of it, but that's pretty much the reality. The post office will gladly deliver porn magazines to your P.O.Box, and just about any gas station magazine rack has plenty of porn available, at least if Playboy etc. count as such; same goes for most major super markets that have a magazine section.
which is exactly why you have *very* easy access to the various pay-per-view channels on your cable box. Heck, here's a predition: if Apple really decides to enter the TV business, you can pretty much decide its fate by whether or not something like Playboy TV and other channels like it will be available on it. Looking at cable providers revenues, that's a major source of income, and you can bet that all these customers won't switch to an AppleTV if they are cut off from their little private pleasures; it's too big of a business.
Game consoles are primarily for kids of various ages... (yes, some of them are over 30) But the hypocrisy that wanton violence in games is OK, but sex is not, is another subject that's neck-hair-raising, because I consider the violence i.e. the termination of life a lot more offensive than human procreation and the various games related to it (various S&M practices excluded)
However, again, the game boxes are an accessory to your TV, so if you don't get the content over your game box you'll get it over your DVD player or your cable provider's pay per view or premium subscription channels, so it's not like your TV is locked out. The problem is that because content on iOS devices is a single-source affair (unless you jail-break), the hypocrisy and inconsistency in the application of the "rules" is infuriating.
I personally don't give a damn about porn, I've seen it, and I consider it boring. But I consider censorship of any shape or form, be it governmental or corporate, even more offensive. In a world in which ever more things that used to be public sphere become privatized, the reasoning that it's private and thus under corporate control, starts to stink ever more. Let's do a few more rounds of privatization, and you can light the bill of rights on fire, because there's no public ground left on which it's applicable, even though theoretically it's still in force.
This much like certain states revoking abortion clinics their license to operate even though not officially forbidding abortions. The result is that something that's federally protected is being defacto outlawed, by skirting federal law with state regulations.
I mean, nobody would stand for it if Apple would say we don't sell iOS devices to women, because we believe in male superiority, and we're a private entity, so we choose whom we sell to. But it's supposed to be acceptable for them to decide what is or isn't "decent" when it comes to art, particularly when there are multiple levels of protection as is the case with the 500px site where all nude pictures are by default blacked out anyway, and by far the minority of the provided content.
This is a warning, not a prohibition ;) Apple can warn all they want about potentially offensive content, as long as they don't prohibit it.
They do more than "not facilitate". They actively get in the way. And as I said, I don't even care about the porn, I do care about the slanted values when it comes to sex and violence on the one hand, and the wholesale classification of porn of a content that's largely non-sexual at all, has a reasonably small number of artistic nudity, and a few traces of pornography if you care to hunt for it long enough; none of which is visible at all, unless you first specifically enable it to be visible AND allow 17+ rated apps on the iOS device.
I was born back in the dark ages when most kids had to rub two sticks together to see nudes.
But I learned the secret of the Library's photography section and it was great! (also the pagan/wiccan books had some "skyclad ceremonies" in them). Were some of those images pornographic? Probably, but not nearly as much as my uncle's Hustler/Penthouse collection under the bed. Or the even skeezier magazines I occasionally found in the local ELKs club trash can. Or the porn VHS tapes hidden in my friend's dad's secret compartment in the hutch by the VCR. Before I was a teenager I'd seen it all, because I wanted to see it and no one, not my mother, priests and nuns who taught me in school, or God himself was going to stop me.
Did it damage me? Did it turn me into some kind of misogynist who hates women and views them solely as objects to be used for my own pleasure? Obviously I don't think so, or I wouldn't be making this post because I'd be too busy out using women or looking for more gonzo porn on my android.
It's an uncomfortable fact of life that many children begin to develop a sexual drive long before they're emotionally ready for a sexual relationship. I recall that decade as one of agonizing desire without real hope of relief. Probably all of the above served to amp it up a little, but I was all over the Encyclopedia, Sears Catalogs and Nat Geos long before my library card opened a whole new world of porn. Even the most innocuous nudity was arousing and pornographic to my dirty little mind.
The idea that the app store is protecting any child from viewing porn (or art nudes, or whatever) is completely ridiculous. If they want it, they will find it. And many of them do want it.
So the irony of all this is that my interest in pornography started my interest in photography.
