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back to article Apple races developer to censor smut

Yesterday's apparent opening of the iPhone to adult content has turned into a race between Apple and the developer about who decided to remove the application from iTunes and why. First the "Hottest Girls" application was available, then it disappeared and the finger was quickly pointed at Apple's moralistic stance on …

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  1. Michael C
    Grenade

    grey areas...

    The app was not approoved containing 17+ content, rated that way or not. It was advertised to everyone who previously downloaded it as containing only underwear clad models. 17+ or not, the downloaded had a given expectation of what to expect, and by the company changing the content post-approval, without updating the app version or requiring a re-download to access the new racier content, they did in fact violate Apple's policy as it;s possib le (though unlikely) that existing app owners might have been offended. (I actually have an uncle who loves women in lingere, but speaks against playboy and nudity, he might have been offended).

    If they posted an updated version, enabled a way to seperate nude from noon-nude content through the app, set nude as defaulted to off, and tied it in to the rating system more directly, allowing those still interested in the non-nude features to continue use without accessing nude content, then this might have gone down differently...

    Apple has ALLWAYS been fishy about externally linked content... The devs knew they were skating on questionable ice. They should have partnered more directly with Apple on this.

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  2. Jimbo 7
    Pint

    really?

    maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know one single guy between 17-65 who does not like this kind of stuff ... can we stop masking things?

    You can download any kind of pictures to your phone using safari, who cares if there is automated app which does this for you.

    This kinda remotely reminds me the video on Mozzila site for FF 3.5 ... the guy is saying that one of the cool feature is to delete browse history from 2 hours ago so nobody can see what present you bought ... yeah rght, it was a present I was looking at.

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  3. Codge
    FAIL

    Pr0n?

    Most of the porn I have seen^H^H^H^H heard about involves images of penetration of some description, not just a glimpse of a funbag or two!

    Censorship of the worst kind

    Double + Fail.

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  4. bertie bassett
    FAIL

    Nipples

    "Human nipples, when attached to female bodies, are clearly pornographic"

    Only in God Bless America - go to any beach in the Mediterranean this summer and you'll see hundreds and thousands of nipples none of which are porno, just getting suntanned (or burnt!)

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  5. fluffy

    They'd better watch out

    when they discover that people can also get remotely-hosted porn via Safari.

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  6. Steven Hunter
    Thumb Down

    WTF?

    Why in God's name would you pay $1.99 to access porn when you have the whole damn Internet on the same device?

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  7. Annihilator
    FAIL

    Eh??

    "...temporarily sold out. The server usage is extremely high because of the popularity of this app. Thus, by not distributing the app, we can prevent our servers from crashing"

    Impressive. I didn't know you could sell out of downloadable media! Do the app servers load several copies, removing each one as they're stripped (pun intended) off the disk?

    As for removing the app, that's brilliant logic. GMail should try that during their next outage. "We've switched off GMail so that no-one can get annoyed when they can't reach it due to server issues"

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  8. Ian Ferguson
    Troll

    Safari

    I can see porn through Safari on the iPhone, perhaps they'd better remove that application?

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  9. Dan 10
    FAIL

    So...

    ...what was the point of introducing ratings?

    I'm old enough to decide for myself what is allowed on my iphone, thanks.

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Will iPhone buyers ever learn?

    I would love to be able to go out and spend too much money on a really flashy sports car, and then be told where I can and can't go in it, what petrol I have to use in it and what people I am allowed to carry as passengers...

    Hang on a second, is it actually my car afterall?

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  11. Adam Starkey

    So it's just a straight TaC violation...

    Not much of a story then, is it?

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  12. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    Bah.

    Nipples aren't pornography... Just ask Spain about that. Only in the US (And other over-conservative nations) are nipples considered pornographic.

    Just Apple being themselves. Server-based content is what make the internet what it is, apparently Apple is still stuck in their own Reality Distortion Field

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  13. Steve Evans
    Jobs Horns

    always amusing...

    ...that the USA consider themselves the land of the free, yet almost daily, the free are told what they can and can't see, what they can and can't watch by a bunch of puritan conservatives.

    Back here in old England, the place many of them left for "freedom", a 16 year old can get their top off and "show 'em" in a national paper.

    And we can all look at them (if we choose).

    It's great :-)

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  14. Jimbo 7

    to Steve Evans

    I am seriously jealous !! This is not a joke, I mean it. I am really sick of this crap in US, on one side we cannot drink at age 18, cannot look at nice tits on TV, cannot get a BJ in some states and yet we can join army and shoot people

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  15. Trokair 1
    Alert

    On the one hand.....

    Yes, our country (us) has it's fair share of "save the children" baby-sitter conformist lazy schmucks. On the other hand, so does the UK from what I gather.

    Regardless, this is less about removing material and more about changing the nature of the app and thus violating the policy that the dev must agree to.

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  16. Player_16
    Grenade

    @ Jimbo 7

    If it doesn't involve blood and guns, it can't be viewed.

    'America: got my bible

    America: got my hand gun

    Now I'm ready!!'

    D.O.A (A punk band from Canada)

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  17. Steve Evans

    @Jimbo 7

    Ah, but you can get behind the wheel of a 5+ litre V8 plastic car at 15!

    The mind really does boggle... I think I'd prefer the 15 years olds to be doing the drinking, and not allowed behind the wheel of the vet until 21... Preferably older!

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  18. Gav
    Thumb Down

    The Pathetic Side

    The pathetic side to this story is not the censorship, nor the developers trying to pull a fast one. It's not even hypocritical attitudes of society to the human body.

    It's the sad-sacks who'll pay to see tiny pictures of nuddies on their phone.

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  19. ZenCoder

    Nipples

    They city I live in (Columbus,OH) its perfectly legal for women to be topless whenever they want. Someone went to court over it and it was ruled that its not indecent exposure.

    I went to a crowded community festival yesterday and dozen or so women who chose to take advantage of this particular right, and no one really noticed much. It was a family event with lot of kids present, no one seem to have any need to "protect" their kids from nipples.

    I have a friend who breast fed her child where-ever she was and she never had any complaints.

    So my part of America isn't afraid of female nipples.

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  20. Dr. Mouse

    Am I the only one...

    who read this:

    "Human nipples, when attached to female bodies, are clearly pornographic"

    and got an image in his head of people stapling human nipples all over their body, or wearing them as earings?

    Yes?

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  21. Chris 46
    Paris Hilton

    @Steve Evans

    Actually, the law / code of conduct (not sure which) has now changed and only 18's and over can now "wap them out" in a national newspaper.

    Believe this was on the back of certain 16 yr olds who appeared in the Daily Sport getting teased, bullied etc as they were still at school

    Paris?: She knows all about wapping them out

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  22. Richard 102
    Coat

    @Jimbo7

    "I don't know one single guy between 17-65 who does not like this kind of stuff"

    Oh, please. There are any number of male pope singers, interior decorators, and political activists who wouldn't like that app.

    Mine's the one with the ermine cuffs

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  23. Richard 102

    To Europe

    Remember, you shipped a lot of your perverts, criminals, and religious zealots over to the colonies. In fact, rather foisted them on those who were just here to build a new life. My ancestors blame your ancestors.

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