We're banned from the iPad

[oggbashan]

Don't try to put your Literotica stories on the iPad:

iPad's Nipple Ban Arouses Ire of German Publishers: 2 days 12 hours ago

William Boston
Contributor

AOL News BERLIN (May 11) – From the topless bathers on the French Riviera to the prostitutes in the windows of red-light districts in Hamburg and Amsterdam, Europeans have long demonstrated a more open approach to nudity than Americans. Could Apple's revolutionary iPad change even that?

The daily topless "Bild girl" still smiles on the front page of Germany's best-selling Bild newspaper, and titillating images adorn the pages of weekly magazines such as Germany's Stern and Spiegel. European publishers have tried to take the "sex sells" formula for print success into the world of digital media apps.

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs holds the iPad in January. Apple has rules against nudity in apps for the device.

Just don't do it on the iPad, says Steve Jobs. From German publishers' point of view, the Apple founder has morphed into a digital Ayatollah and is banning nudity -- from outright porn to photos of renegade nipples on the catwalks of Milan -- anywhere in the emerging new media world based on Apple's iPad tablet computer.

Recently, Apple's cyber police removed Stern's gallery of nude photos and forced Bild to put some clothes on the "Bild girl."

"Today they censor nipples, tomorrow it's editorial content," said a spokeswoman at Bild.

Stern.de, the Web site of the German weekly magazine, has now installed what its CEO Chris Hasselbring calls an "erotic filter" to ensure that no content in violation of Apple's rules makes it onto the Stern app for the iPhone or iPad. But Hasselbring and other German publishers are not happy with the situation.

"Apple has changed its business model to become a content provider but it doesn't understand what responsibility that new role carries," says Hasselbring. "A publisher must respect freedom of the press and they should not be the ones to decide which content is delivered to the consumer."

The global magazine publishing industry greeted the launch of the iPad earlier this year with a sigh of relief, celebrating Jobs as the savior of the beleaguered industry. "The iPad has launched a new era in publishing," Mathias Doepfner, the CEO of Axel Springer Verlag, which publishes the Bild newspaper, said on the Charlie Rose show last month. "Every publisher should thank Steve Jobs every day."

They might not be thanking him for long.

Jobs' blitzkrieg against German nudity on his iPad could have far-reaching consequences for the publishing industry if he is allowed to dictate what content is allowed and what should be verboten.

Writing in the New Yorker recently, media journalist Ken Auletta examined the long-term aims of Jobs, his arch-nemesis Jeff Bezos -- the Amazon founder and developer of the Kindle -- and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Auletta suggests that Jobs and Bezos want their devices and associated services to supplant the publishing industry as we now know it. Google has also taken a step in this direction with its massive digital library.

Those developments could leave several big players out for a lock on distribution with substantial power over content, too. That is the more significant issue at stake behind Jobs' decision to nix the German nipples from Apple's app store: Is it good for a company like Apple to have so much power over determining what is good for the rest of us?

Consumers are already voicing protest at censorship of content and intervention rights of some site operators. The BBC reported this week that Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales relinquished some of his site privileges after Wikipedia users complained that he deleted images from the site without first consulting users.

In early April, Larry Sanger, the estranged Wikipedia co-founder, filed a complaint with the FBI that Wikipedia Commons was "knowingly distributing child pornography." The complaint prompted Wikipedia Commons to delete hundreds of images.

The problem is that the censor robots at sites like Wikipedia or on the iPad still have a hard time telling whether a nude image is porn, harmless titillation, or an image with educational benefit for medical students, for example. For just that reason, Wikipedia had to go back and reinstall many of the images that it first took down and later determined were not porn after all.

In the Book of Jobs, though, there seems to be no gray area. In an e-mail allegedly from Jobs that was published on the TechCrunch blog, Jobs dismissed his critics, saying: "We do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone." And for now, apparently, that includes the Bild girl.

 

[LaRocha]

I thought it was just Apple sponsored applications. I think you'll still be able to visit lit and read e-porno stories on it.

 

[Belegon]

To me, I always see a bit of threat in the control of any kind of information. Its a bit knee-jerk, but grounded in a bit of pragmatism.

The rapid technological and moral growth over the last 300 years is directly related to the fact that more people have information available.

For thousands of years, the human race was largely illiterate and unable to have anything other than basic information about the world they lived in. Personally, I see a direct correlation between the widespread availability of information and education and the huge strides we have made in, historically speaking, a very short time.

Thus, while I don't really believe that Mr. Jobs nipple views are a threat to me, I do see a reason to watch him and Google and the rest of those who have the potential to put a bottleneck in our info flow...

 

[Salvor-Hardon]

This is when I like knowing and befriending the side of the internets that don't always play by the rules. There are ways to get what you want, where you want it. They may ban it from the formal apps and they things they approve, but the developers and hackers will find an open space through which they can sneak in all the nipples, boobs, pussies, cocks and asses we want.

 

[xssve]

What's the saying? "The internet treats censorship like damage, and routes around it".

 

[Handley_Page]

For those gentlemen interested:-

http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.bild.de/BILD/unterhaltung/erotik/bild-girls/bild-girls.html&prev=/search%3Fq%3DDer%2BBild%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DWFv%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GBfficial%26prmd%3Di&rurl=translate.google.co.uk&usg=ALkJrhj9AwWs4TX1qSGESMGFmxN0B2oPhQ

 

[TxRad]

What's the saying? "The internet treats censorship like damage, and routes around it".

China and other places are finding that out the hard way.

 

[PoppingTom]

Who buys an iPad ?

I still wonder.

Over 500 € for no flash, no WLAN, no multitasking, no porn, no better reading than kindle, no compatibility to anything but iPhone, no killer apps.

No reason to buy it.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

In the not too distant future, someone will take the Kindle screen, the iPad's page turning app, a snazzy case and include a USB port or two and have a world beater of a device. Until then, I can wait.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

How does the iPad page turner app work? Do you just swipe your finger across the page(screen)? Or do you flip the whole thing?

I have drawing of a reader...two pages, just like a book... where you flip the side you want the page turn from, just like a book.

Just waiting for someone to want to build it, then pay me royalties.

 

[3113]

Jobs isn't aiming for the porn market. He's aiming for the textbook market. If he makes the iPad family friendly, parents will buy it for their kids; if their kids have it, friends of their kids will want it. If all the kids have it, book publishers will put out text books and kids books on it (the biggest book market out there is currently kids and young adults). Such books selling via the iTunes store means money going to Apple--even if they don't make a profit on the books, once you've got someone in the store there for the books, they might buy something else--movies, music, etc.

Thus, the iPad gains new customers (hopefully life-time customers) for its marketplace.

If the kids can read or see porn on it, parents won't buy it for the kids. So it's probably worth the problems with Germany in order to secure the family-friendly customers. After all, one can still see all the porn one wants with a computer, and that really works better because you'll at least have one hand free. An iPad might require two hands (one to hold the iPad the other to manipulate the material on screen).

Hence, Jobs secures a new generation of buyers. But have no fear, adults. I'll bet you money that once the kid market is secured, there will be apps and other ways of viewing the nipples. Jobs can always recant on the censorship after he's sold a few million more iPads.

 

[Xelebes]

There is also the rumoured German tablet that's in the design process right now that will allow us to have all the adult stuff. Just hope it hits the market soon.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

How does the iPad page turner app work? Do you just swipe your finger across the page(screen)? Or do you flip the whole thing?

I have drawing of a reader...two pages, just like a book... where you flip the side you want the page turn from, just like a book.

Just waiting for someone to want to build it, then pay me royalties.

As I understand the iPad, you swipe your finger across the bottom of the device when it's held 'landscape'. The view-screen shows both pages of a book. Each time you swipe the screen, the page 'turns' visually. It even looks like a book page turning. For those of us slightly uncomfortable about all this new-fangled nonsense, it's attractive.