Apple’s Policy on Censorship

When the company announced the App Store, its CEO Steve Jobs described it as a marketplace that welcomes any third-party applications, providing they comply with 3 simple rules (at least they seem to be like that). Applications submitted should not be illegal, obscene or an outright bandwidth hog. But Apple's decided to expand and deepen its demands becoming much pickier about what it will agree to display in the Store, which is really the only simple way to deliver third-party apps to front-end customers and get some remuneration.

In fact, now Apple does not have any consistent and unbiased manual or set of regulations on censorship policy  (if such kinds of rules can be called unbiased). Apple has added into its Section 3.3.14 of Apple's iPhone Developer Program License Agreement a phrase with the following wording no things that “in Apple's reasonable judgment may be found objectionable.” That’s what they follow in their censorship policy. It’s quite a broad explanation for banning. Especially taking into consideration the fact Apple is a private company and is free to do what it finds appropriate.

Some  pretexts are really funny, for example there was an  e-book app called Eucalyptus which was rejected because  it could be used to download and read the Kama Sutra. Though Apple is also famous for its swift view changing, later the mentioned app was approved. The same story happened to Freelance artist Mark Fiore’s app which was at first  turned down on the pretext that it ridiculed public figures. Apple’s representatives hinted to resubmit the app after its author had gained a Pulitzer Prize.

Now many news resources do have iPhone apps to distribute their content among Apple fans and followers. So, taking into consideration the previously discussed compliance of media moguls, can Apple really affect and influence the media market? The same question was asked to Wall Street Journal and USA Today’s representatives:  if Apple has the unilateral right to remove these journalism organizations’ news apps if the corresponding app delivers information which for some reason is viewed by  Apple as unacceptable, will the content be changed? Media representatives found it quite difficult to answer the question which means   as in the old joke if the woman doesn’t say “NO”, it means everything is possible.

Such strange Apple’s policy has enormously infuriated many iPhone developers, not some Indian or CIS countries third-party developers that are numerous and featureless hiding under the cover of outsourced programming. Steven Frank from Panic, Inc., Delicious Library developer Wil Shipley, Brent Simmons, developer of the NetNewsWire RSS reader were extremely negative concerning the mentioned flaws of Apple’s policy. And these are quite famous specialists, that have numerous design rewards from Apple itself, so in particular the type of developers Apple may not want to lose.

So Apple, which boasts of quality control and a consistent product, must take on something less hypocritical and much clearer for both customers and developers.