Apple and Censorship...I've often written about Apple's increasingly 1984ish censorship policies. Now they've upped the ante by censoring a Pulitzer prize winning cartoonist's app "because it ridicules public figures".
Will books that satire public figures not be allowed in the Apple bookstore? What is the distinction between the book and the software on the limited issue of satire?
I envision a commercial: Hi, I'm a PC. And I'm a Mac.
(Mac is sitting at a desk with a stack of books. He scans through the pages and then muttering, shakes his head and throws the book in the trash.)... See More
PC: Wathcha doin, Mac?
Mac: Oh...I'm protecting users from these books that satirize public figures and the government.
(Mac rips some pages from a book, but when he can't he throws the whole book in the trash).
(PC picks up the Declaration of Independence. ) Mac: Give me that. Can't be offending the king. (He takes a big rubber stamp, hammers the declaration with it. Holding it up we see it says "banned". Meanwhile PC is reading a book he picked up from one of Mac's piles.)
Mac: What are your reading?
PC: 1984 by George Orwell...
Mac: Gimme that....
PC: I'm a PC
Mac: And I'm a Mac...
PC: and this is Dan Lyons, author of the Fake Steve Jobs
(Mac stamps stamps "banned" on Lyons forehead.)
PC: and I'm a PC.
Apple should not be in the content filtering business...such censorship should be anathema to all Americans. Apple, we want to control what goes on our devices, not your corporate paternalism.
