Buzz Out Loud Lounge forum: Boobgate... what's the big deal?

As I no longer listen to the show, I don't know what their commets on this were, but I can't see how you can blame a company from keeping certain merchandise out of their store. Do all book stores need to carry Playboy magazines? I think not. So why should Apple have to carry ANY app that they don't want to?

that important for you to have on your phone. Nobody is forced to buy an iPhone after all.

I'm not being dismissive either. I think adults should have the right to look at whatever they want to. That doesn't mean companies are required to build their business models around your desire to do so. If you don;t like it, vote with your wallet. You can complain too, but somehow I think I already know what Apple's response will be to that. I'm sure Apple did some cost/benefit analyses to determine what demographic is more important to their bottom line... and I'm pretty sure it doesn't include the bloggers making such a big deal out of this.

Some people in the tech sphere are acting as if this is some sort of horrible travesty for individual rights. But its just another company protecting its brand by choosing what to sell or not sell in its store. Its nothing that doesn't happen at other stores around the country every single day.

China is a government that dictates rules for an entire society that has no other choice. Apple is a company that makes products and services... products and services which we are all free to choose (or not choose) to buy.

What Apple is doing here is free market capitalism at work. They are responding to demands from the market. I can't help it if the part of the market that doesn't care for porn is louder and more influential than the part that wants absolutely restrictions on any apps in the app store. But its still the market at work. Target deals with it. Wal-Mart deals with it.. Barnes and Noble deals with it. Every company in the world makes decisions about what they will and will not allow to be sold under their name.

If there really is a demand for porn apps on smart-phones some entrepreneur will pop up to take advantage of that demand. But a hundred indignant tech bloggers does not a market demand make. And Apple, like lots of other successful companies,knows that the real money to be made is in the mainstream. And no mainstream business wants to have the reputation of being porn peddlers. Its that simple.

Thats sort of my point.... lots of tech pundits are being more than a little hysterical here. Sort of like the way some disingenuous politicians like to compare Obama to Hitler. Such comparisons plays well to a certain audience. Doesn't make it true or even remotely reasonable. Thankfully not all tech pundits feel that way:

http://kara.allthingsd.com/20100223/who-cares-if-apple-bans-some-porn-in-apps-store-overheated-bloggers-thats-who/

I never said Chinese government censorship was good or acceptable. I said that comparing a business decision by a company operating in the free market to government level censorship was irrational and sensationalistic.

I must say I am surprised at how much Tom and Molly are making of this, and how giddy the hosts are about this "wobbly eye-boobs" app. Sounds like some kind of frat-cast. Claiming this is a slippery slope is just silly. There is enough market pressure that we are not going to slip very far before the truly important, and even fun, apps start to disappear.

In full disclosure, my wife and I did in email Apple about this very issue months ago. We try to be conscientious and oversee our kids downloading of apps, and they are unable to download anything without our oversight. But why should we have to browse with them through numerous "Boobalicious" and "Babealicious" apps with suggestive images on their icons just to get through to the kid-friendly ones. Even the Playboy app has the decency to just have the Playboy bunny displayed and not a suggestive image.

I suppose that they are people that purchased their iPhone for this purpose and are really bent out of shape because they require the mobility that the iPhone provides when viewing this type of content. I am fine with Apple keeping them available, but we are just asking for a way to filter it.

I'm not talking about browsing the app store on the iPhone (or iPod touch) itself. I'm talking about browsing the app store in iTunes on my PC. There is no Settings>General>Restrictions in iTunes.

What's amazing is that some people are acting is if Apple has taken away some constitutional right to "free speech". Or that "this is different" because Apple has some sort of obligation to allow others to sell their wares in their store.

No retail store is obliged to carry any item they do not wish to carry. They don't owe anybody an explanation, they aren't required to set standards in writing (although this is usually good for business to do so). In the end however, the decisions about what gets sold and what does not can be as arbitrary as they want them to be. Its not fair but nobody ever promised the free market was fair.

If Apple censored the music I cared about in their store I would simply buy the music elsewhere (actually I already do for the price alone). But I'm not naive enough to think that Apple is obligated to sell anything it doesn't want to sell for whatever reason they desire. If enough people stop buying from iTunes, Apple will likely change its way.

So if the App store sees a mass exodus over the lack of boobie apps then maybe Apple will change its mind. I doubt this will happen though. I also suspect that a overexcited bloggers whining about Apples "free speech" or "censorship" will fall on deaf ears with Apple.

You've got to be joking. Developers don't have some "right" to sell their products in a store. Retailers get to determine what goes in their stores, not developers. This is true even if that store is tied to a device. If you don't like it you are free to make your own hardware and link it to your own store full of boobie apps. That's the free market at work.

But don't try to play the "free speech" card. Throwing around the terms "censorship" and "free speech" in such a cheap and easy way is sensationalistic and undermines the credibility of your arguments.

had their "free speech" taken away because they have been rejected by publishers or because their published books will not be carried by Wal-mart. OMG...The sky is falling! Free speech is comiong to an end because Amazon rejected me!

The fact that the Kindle is a closed book selling system does not make a bit of difference. If they reject your material, you are still free to find someone else to publish your book or self publish on another device. Better yet, make your own device.

Nobody else is obligated to let you "speek" on their front lawn.

choose. You are not reqwuirted to live your enbtire life under the thumb of Apple.

Nor are you required to live completely in the Kindle ecosystem. Nor the Nook ecosystem, Nor the Zune ecosystem. Nor the Xbox 360 ecosystem. Nor the the Playstation3 ecosystem. Nor the Nintendo DS ecosystem. Nor the Blackberrry ecosystem. Nor the Android ecosystem. Nor the TiVo ecosystem. Etc, Etc,...

All of these product/services are run by companies that are free to operate their walled gardens in as open or as closed a manner as they desire. These are vertically integrated products that you can choose to buy or not buy. The world is filled with such products. And not one of them is a platform for "free speech". It is naive to assume any of these companies owes anybody a platform for free speech (or that they are "morally obligated" to do so). These are for profit companies, not democratic republics.

Chinese people can't just choose a less oppressive government the way you can walk across the street to the Verizon store and choose a less restrictive phone OS from Google. There is absolutely no comparison between these things. Claiming that there is hubris of the highest (and silliest) order.

then you've got to make reasonable comparisons.

If you want to sound like a crank that might show up at a Tea Party protest, then by all means compare electronic devices and their associated services with brutally oppressive communist governments. Better yet, compare them with Hitler! Nothing says I-don't-really-have-an-argument like a good old Hitler comparison.

Unless Apple dominates the market (and at 10-12% of the smartphone market they are nowhere near doing that), there is absolutely no need for any government intrusion into the way they do business. Same with any other vertically integrated product with an attached "store" (set top boxes, eReaders, game consoles, smart phones, etc). As long as there is healthy competition these companies are free to be as restrictive and as arbitrary with their selection content as they want to be. The market will decide, not open source idealogues.

This really reminds me of the way some hardcore open source advocates get so bent out of shape and angry about Macs (or any electronic device that does not offer complete and total unfettered freedom). They pitch fits about how things "should" be and don't seem to understand that different companies will choose to do business differently (and that some users may not care about absolute freedom as much as they care about simplicity and ease of use). And that is exactly how a free market system works, one company offers something another company does not. Nobody gets to tell all companies that must operate in the the same exact way.

If you want that kind of unfettered freedom with your smartphone, iPhones are likely not for you. There are plenty of other OS's to choose from.

Can we cross that bridge when we get to it? The porn debate is not the red herring. The concern that filtering porn means that I won't be able to view my favorite Dilbert comic if Apple decides it is inappropriate, is the red herring. It will never come to that! The customers wouldn't allow it. It throws us off the topic of allowing parents to control what our kids are exposed to.

"allow them"? Its their service. They can ban whatever they want. All we can do is vote with our wallets, but again, this fear that they are going to start banning everything that is slightly controversial is the red herring. It reminds me of the concerns that if we allow universal healthcare in this country, we are officially going to become a communist nation.

And what parental controls on iTunes allow me to prevent my children seeing "Boobalicious" and other apps? I have mine set to restrict to 9+ and I still seem to have access to them on the front page, and can read some comments by posters that I would rather my children not see. The #2 free app right now is the "Sex Positions Game", right on the top of the iTunes store.