Saturday, March 26, 2011

Apple censorship - who do you choose?

Apple's App Store chooses what content to approve and what not to approve. They're a private company, so they have that right. Although their choice to disapprove political satire until they were called on it was questionable.

But now they face further difficulties in deciding what to approve and what to reject. Apple approved an app by a group that tries to turn gay people straight. Then thousands objected. Now the app has been removed. Apple has tried to market itself as the Disney of computers, offering a safe space for families to play with computers, specifically not allowing porn. (Except for Sports Illustrated...) They are trying to be everything to everyone, and had to choose between their Christian market and the gay rights market. I'm glad they chose the latter, but it's the sort of choice you end up making when you approve and disapprove content.

Like the choice of whether to host apps that help drivers avoid police checkpoints. The US Senate called on Apple to remove all such apps, saying they encourage drunk driving. The 3rd party developers who write those apps argue that they discourage drunk driving, but that's what they're going to say in front of senators. I think I should be allowed to take a photo of a police officer, even post it with geotags that show when and where I took it. It seems like someone should be allowed to collate that information to see where police are and aren't, but you can definitely see why criminals would find that information useful. (Although when the app developers are collating information made public by police departments on their websites, I'm a little confused why the police are complaining about the extra dissemination.)

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