“Book publishers, newspaper publishers and magazine publishers are experiencing unprecedented revenue compression and are looking at transforming their businesses away from print as a factor of mere survival,” Gewirtz writes. “If Apple’s iPad has the effect on our print reading matter in the way iTunes did on our music consumption, Apple could wind up the dominant channel by which we get published ‘print’ information.”
“That’s why the issue of Apple picking and choosing what we can and can’t read is so disturbing. If they’re forcing magazines to edit their contents in order to get distribution, then whatever Apple’s then-current (and thus far completely arbitrary) rules would determine what you get to read,” Gewirtz writes. “It might even determine the political, religious, or ideological slant of what you’re permitted to read.”
Gewirtz writes, “Because Apple has indicated that it intends to censor published works that it distributes digitally and because Apple has been absolutely non-forthcoming about any details, we as members of the press are, essentially, obligated to point out what’s happening.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Even if Apple does wind up being “the dominant channel by which we get published ‘print’ information,” it’s quite the stretch to imagine it becoming the only channel. That said, Gewitz is perfectly correct that it’s the obligation of the free press to point out what’s happening. With that, we totally agree.
The way I remember it, 1984 was a good year for the digital world.
Nothing about controlling the political and religious message of editorial content will bother Fox viewers.
Interesting point. A little alarmist but interesting nonetheless.
Poor guy totally chose the wrong metaphor, and without specifically pointing it out (you know, George Orwell…), it can easily be taken as the year that marked the beginning of the digital revolution with the birth of Mac.
Apple has said they will censor? I must have missed that memo. Or is the reporter assumming based on Apple’s app stance? Apps are not books and magazines.
Spot on HMCIV!
It seems like this guy is jumping to conclusions. When did Apple ever censor music or decide not to sell music from certain artists? Apps are different… those can have security or stability issues.
Yes indeed. I am, by and large, a huge Apple supporter. However, I do think there needs to be complete transparency in their App/iBook store guidelines. I also feel that some of the rules in place – mostly of the content censoring variety – need to be loosened or dropped all together.
I understand Apple wanting to prevent their iTunes storefronts from becoming an enormous hive of pornography in the same way that the web at large has. However, I feel there are better ways of dealing with that which fall short of an out and out embargo.
Apple will become the porn lovers wet dream yet!
Choice. If I don’t like what is supposedly “edited” then I can go to the Barnes & Noble and buy the book or publication. Why is it people get their panties in so many knots?
The thing is, you can never come up with a perfect set of rules that can be applied universally without exceptions or bad applications.
Apple’s choice is between an all-out ban, and trying to pick and choose. An all-out ban means people complain about censorship etc., but at least it’s equitable; EVERYONE is banned. The alternative of trying to pick and choose will inevitably lead to mountains of complaints about why such-and-such an app was allowed while thus-and-such was denied. It would be almost impossible to maintain any kind of consistency in terms of judgement calls given the sheer number of apps being submitted for review and the number of people required to review said applications in a timely manner.
An all-out ban is less than ideal, but still better than the alternative (I didn’t cover permitting everything because I think most of us can see why that’s a bad thing).
As HMCIV noted, 1984 was a good year for the digital world. Perhaps the author meant FAHRENHEIT 451 ? (Ooh, don’t offend anybody.)
“As a society, we may be at a cusp, a point where we’re transitioning away from a mixed print/digital world to one that’s predominantly digital,” David Gewirtz writes for ZDNet.
I’am happy with the iPad but the term society is out of order here. We need to stop saying and better yet stop thinking things like this. The world is not defined by the way and the amount or the quality of data we read in a device but by how we read and think at all, as individuals and as a society. This digital iPad revolution is significative but very small if it really happens and I hope it will.
On our evening walks through the neighborhood we see in virtually every household a flickering light with people sitting staring religiously in front of it. The television, a magic box, that holds Americans eerily spellbound, without moving, for hours at a time. Night after night, throughout one’s whole life. Americans must have this, without being able to sit in front of this magic box for most of their free hours they would quickly go into withdrawals and get sick.
Orwell? What a joke, we’ve gone well beyond Orwell and 1984 fear-mongering scenarios long ago, and no one even notices it. TV is total thought control, And no one could care less. Steven Jobs is a pipsqueak in comparison.
Good, the distortions of the “press” and the slight to the left and right should be censored. Censored by the public that can quickly fire back as they move to their political objectives.
The quicker people can hammer these papers, new channels, and other. The better off we are. They just fear people with equal or more power than them!
You mean like the way Wal*Mart makes musicians change their music to get on to WM shelves? Like that?
This article is total bull shit. Another alarmist hit-whore trying to spread fear.
Apple has never said that they plan on censoring books, magazines, music, movies or any of the content for which they have no control over available in the iTunes store. When available, they offer both the explicit and “clean” versions of music, and as many will see there are R-Rated movies in the ITS as well. Apple is not going in and bleeping out bad language, or putting black bars over content it finds objectionable – that is in part what the rating system is for.
What Apple has said when they announced the iPhone SDK is what they will not allow: pornography was one of them. Apple created their own mechanism for creating and delivering iPhone apps, and in a way they become a representative for those developers – so it is within Apple’s right to set certain boundaries for what they become responsible for delivering. These boundaries only affect content created by Apple’s SDK and for the app store – not for content created outside of Apple’s own ecosystem.
If people would stop and think about shit before they write, then maybe they wouldn’t be getting themselves into a hissy-fit.
I prefer magazines and books, and will always opt for that choice. Still, I want an iPad- next generation.
Apple has the right to pick and choose what it will sell, not the consumer. I think it’s ridiculous to dictate what apple can or can’t do. In Canada we can’t have crucifixes in class because it offends some religious nutcases. I’m non practicing catholic and I’m not bothered by crucifixes or other religious artifacts. But in this messed up world we have to even sensor the Christmas tree- it’s the holiday tree dontcha know. And forget merry christmas- it’s happy holidays. Let’s go to an extreemist country and sensor their religious beliefs like they done in north America, France, England and other countries. Bet that won’t fly.
So if fanatics get their way with apple, then WTF? So much for our freedom.
Point is, iTunes store is apples store. If you don’t like them apples, buy somewhere else
As HMCIV noted, 1984 was a good year for the digital world. Perhaps the author meant FAHRENHEIT 451 ? (Ooh, don’t offend anybody.)
Well you know what they say…… build a man a fire, he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm the rest of his life
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You may love books and mags, but, will you still love them tomorrow? We’ve only just begun to see what going digital will do for both formats. I’m optimistic that there are good surprises in store.
Secondly, both will have to come down in price …. a lot. And if mags want to charge just a little less than now, they have to drop the ads. Book publishers do well enough without ads. Mag publishers stand to gain much larger sales if they do digital intelligently and less greedily.
Ahh, the sensationalizing media. Can’t they write anything without taking everything to one extreme or another?
The author is getting Apple confused with walmart as far as censoring music and book content.
I don’t believe that Apple will change the text of books or other publications. I have never seen any report that suggests they would until the above blog post.
Yes I can just imagine Murdoch having his mouth pieces censored by someone else when he is so adept at doing that himself. As for ZDNet since when have they ever been objective in anything they write, about as likely as Joseph Goebbels putting the Polish perspective on events.
It’s standard now to invent fake allegations to feed self serving intentions.
Isn’t it amazing how one man’s porn is another man’s Fox News?
Democrats, you can’t live with them and you can’t string them up.
Apple is presenting an option for mobile media. Why must one think the worst of this? iTunes sort of invented a storefront for music distribution and Amazon is similar. I believe the ibook store will merely give readers another way to enjoy reading books.
Apple since 1984, have been giving customers and providers a better option. They are not forcing anyone.
1984? Really?
Oh, and if Apple is censoring content doesn’t mean one can get somewhere else right? I think some censorship is necessary or else we would be freely including disturbing material in kids textbooks.
“It might even determine the political, religious, or ideological slant of what you’re permitted to read.”
You mean that is not happening already on Editorial Boards everywhere be they newspapers like the New York Times or tv like MSNBC or CNN? C’mon, this crap has been happening way long before the iPad was even a twinkle in Steve’s eye! Don’t think for one second that those organizations I listed or others who might list Fox and WSJ or whatever, wouldn’t come to the same conclusion that what we as a public, striving and starving for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth have been continuously let down by those in control of media. Nothing new here if Apple censures and has to be added to the list.
@MMES
Dont’t forget those fat lawyers waiting for a pic or a line of text that can be useful to collect clients for a dear stream of fights in court.
Looks like lots of brainless Fox News deluded Republicans think they bring credit to Apple and dwell on this site.
Let me remind you all that Steve Jobs is an open minded Liberal in the first degree and the first to despise Republicans and their idealsm.
Publishers should only buy space from Apple. Whatever they decide to put into that space is up to the publishers and their readers. By all means Apple should have the power to police its servers and blow the whistle on content which is in an inappropriate space (say, a main bookstore area rather than an adult-only password-protected area) or, at the very extreme, remove what is illegal under the laws of the land.
@Michael
I couldn’t agree more. This guy’s tinfoil hat is on much too tight.
Gewirtz is so full of BS. ZDNET has been sucking at M$ teat for years. Tell me they do not slant the news.
Hah! The pot calls the kettle black.
Liberal ‘journalists’ have been censoring information for over a century now, twisting facts and obscuring truth to further their own biases in many and varied ways, subtle and not so subtle.
Now that they face a higher power they suddenly realize they won’t be in control for much longer.
I stopped reading ‘news’papers after a succession of articles that I had intimate knowledge about turned out to contain gaping errors and falsehoods. Then, in the worst example of media bias yet, millions of people were duped into believing we’d finally get an honest man into the White House.
I love Apple products and have used them religiously for 20 years. I currently own 1 MBP 17″, 1 iMac 24″, 1 Cinema Display 24″, 1 Mac mini, 2 iPhones, 2 Time Capsules, 5 Airport Expresses, and an Apple TV. You’ll only pry these things, in the words of the late, great Charles Heston, “…from the grip of my cold, dead hands”. But Apple’s insane (and arbitrary) philosophy of imposing it’s values & ideology in regards to app / content distribution both pisses me off and scares the living hell out of me. I feel most people will accept it when it comes to apps, but *if* Apple starts censoring media content via it’s ‘iBookstore’, Jobs better be prepared for the unholy shitstorm that will descend on Cupertino.
iTunes labels “explicit” content then provides uncut. Perhaps the same with books and magazines?
@Nobama
Keep your insane delusions to yourself. This is not a political site.
@ Macintosh
If Apple and Steve were to run their business strictly as die-hard liberals, wouldn’t they allow anything and everything into their store? Isn’t it the right/conservatives the ones that are supposed to do the censoring?
Give me one plausible reason why Apple would start censoring media via its ‘iBookstore’.
I bet you can’t though, because your job is to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt, not substantiate it. So you can float the idea of Apple censoring media, but you can’t explain why they would.
As for your “I love Apple!’ BS, the only reason you wrote that was in an attempt to make your FUD seem credible. It’s an old technique used by astroturfers to ‘legitimize’ themselves:
“I love Burger King’s food. I’ve eaten it for 20 years. I’m eating it right now. But you know what? I disagree with their insane philosophy of supporting terrorism. I feel most people will accept it when it comes to minor terrorist organizations, but *if* Burger King starts funding Al Qaeda, Chidsey better be prepared for the unholy shitstorm that will descend on Miami-Dade County”.
And then after repeating it on a hundred or so blogs/social sites/fast-food messageboards, McDonalds gives you your paycheck.
I think it is important here to understand that Apple is only intending to control what content that they themselves sell directly through either the iTunes store or the soon-to-be iBookstore. But, since Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The NYT, USA Today, Wired, et. al., will all apparently be providing their own apps, Apple will not be selling or controlling the content that is delivered by those apps so will have no say whatsoever about the content that those apps deliver. So, just relax people because you will continue to get the same type of content (or even better) from those distributors or publishers as you have in the past.
Consider the publisher: ZDnet. If there is a Web site that appears to be dedicated to sowing FUD about Apple, it’s them. Their publishers are so far up Steve Ballmer’s fat ass that I doubt we would even see their toes dangling out.
Any site whose mantra is “Die Apple scum, Die! Die! Die” is one that I take with a deep grain of salt. Such is ZDnet.
That said, the best way to respond is to use your freedom of speech (that is, before Obama declares that null and void) to politely yet firmly respond to the lies sown by this ZDnet frigtard.
My response to Gerwitz:
Gerwitz and the Big Lie
Consider the source: ZDNet. If ever there was a Web site dedicated to spreading FUD about Apple, it’s these guys. Gerwitz posits that Apple is evil, and wants to block content being sold through its book store for the iPad. To him, this amounts to censorship.
Taking this logic further, I am sure that Mr. Gerwitz would be most satisfied if you were able to purchase child pornography or al-Qaeda terrorism and torture training manuals directly from Amazon or at your local Barnes and Noble. As I understand it now, neither store makes this type of printed and video literature available for sale, which amounts to – you guessed it – censorship. Obviously then, Amazon and Barnes and Noble are evil, because they arbitrarily decide what you may or may not read.
Absurd? Of course. But it is easy to deconstruct the sensationalist FUD that is this wretched article. Perhaps you would like to debate the issue of school textbooks, and what literature public schools and even public libraries allow – or not. Often, very questionable and arbitrary decisions have been made by public authorities on what you or your children can read. Yet, to Gerwitz and the ZDNet, Apple, and by extension, Steve Jobs is the nexus of all evil.
The point is that a vendor of books has a right to decide what they choose to sell, often for business and not ethical or moral reasons. Further, if the iPad is a success, you can expect this will attract competitors more than willing to sell just about anything Apple cannot (hello, Random House) or won’t.
The iPad has not yet reached the hands of consumers, and already there are those like Gerwitz who reminds me of the hunters in an Arctic Spring eager to hunt and club baby seals to death. Mr. Gerwitz, before you jump to too hasty a conclusion, please let this play out. It takes time to open a store and to stock its shelves, even electronic ones. Until Apple makes an overt and explicit statement that they choose what you and I will read, I remain skeptical of the highly skewed conclusions of Mr. Gerwtiz and ZDnet.
You should too.
I fear we are all being played by a Web site that often stoops to being little more than sensationalist click whores. If that is true, and I am increasingly coming to that conclusion, it’s hardly a noble way to make a buck.
thinking for oneself…still the #1 antidote to thought control conspiracies everywhere…
television is insidious because, apparently, it feeds directly into the visual cortex without reasoning applied until after the fact, if at all since that is a high effort, deliberate process. So TV is pumping straight into the brain and unless you make an effort to question what you’re seeing, then you are basically just a passive mind-fscked potato. No wonder people seem so accepting of crap pouring out of the TV. t’s open up and say ahh time. Evil. Who reads nowadays anyway?- it might be a generalization to say this but it certainly doesn’t seem like teenagers do? Scary, it really is.
Most parents want their kids to have access to books and music without overly worrying about content. A lack of selectivity (censorship) means those parents will have to look elsewhere for a store they feel may better serve their kids and even their own preferences. If Apple is making a decision to support those parents, and even adults who don’t want certain things, then Apple is filling the niche. It is then incumbent on others to provide any fully unlocked bookshelf. Apple is choosing whom it wants to serve. It should not be forced to serve a set of customers different from those it has already chosen.
Would Disney have bought the argument, many years ago, that it is not offering adult fare and should? Of course not. Sure, others did offer it. But, prior to Disney, no one really offered what it finally offered.
Each company should be able to select their target audience and customers. That’s what Apple is doing and has been doing. If there’s a market for other things, others will fill it.
“As HMCIV noted, 1984 was a good year for the digital world. Perhaps the author meant FAHRENHEIT 451 ? (Ooh, don’t offend anybody.)”
They were referring to the book ‘1984’.
I would draw the line at censorship of any written content. This is not like the app store, where “family friendly” is something I can understand, if not agree with. But I absolutely will not stand for Apple (or anyone) deciding for me what is appropriate to read. If I want to read Lady Chatterly, or the Story of O, or anything else, that’s my business and no one should be censoring that. Nor should magazines be censored (with the possible exception of X-rated magazines, if they even exist anymore). Subsuming freedom of speech to some arbitrary corporate ethics model is fundamentally wrong, and I will most certainly vote with my dollars if Apple does decide to implement anything involving censorship of the written word.
Republicans, you can’t live with them, you can’t stuff them in a sack.
Quoting: “It might even determine the political, religious, or ideological slant of what you’re permitted to read.”
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Ha! Ha! Ha! This is really too funny… while in many countries (USA included) you’re mostly free to be “like everyone else”!
Have you allready seen a atheist President in USA? No! This is forbidden!
Nothing about controlling the political and religious message of editorial content will bother CNN viewers.
“Let me remind you all that Steve Jobs is an open minded Liberal in the first degree and the first to despise Republicans and their idealsm.”
You must not assume that others have your spiteful mind.
Yes, this aspect of Apple – and I am a huge Apple fan and user since 1984 – scares the crap out of me…
ANY kind of censoring is wrong – and will indeed have the effects as mentioned above in the article..
CR
There is confusion between censorship, and a store choosing not to sell certain products. If the iPad, (like the iPod) will allow users to music, movies, video’s and now ebooks from sources other than Apple, I have no problem with this at all. I cannot buy certain musical artists, or movies at Apple. But I can get them elsewhere, and I can enjoy them on my iPod. Apple is not censoring what I listen to or watch, the just choose not to sell certain items. If I was totally blocked from using content from other sources on the iPad. Then I think it would be censorship. (Im not talking about the apps I can run, only what I can read, watch or listen to. Apps are a whole other subject, and I think a different level of concerns.)
I think that wats interesting is that if Apple really wanted AppleTv to take off they would offer an adult part if the iTunes store so that a customer would have easy and quick access to any type of porn content that they want instantly. I know it’s going to make people mad, but when it comes to adult material there is LITERALLY nothing that can be deemed illegal except for kiddie porn, because of the 1st Amendment. I know this will cause a storm, but the right to freedom of speach applies to Democrats, Republicans, Black Panthers, and Neo-Nazis. No one is more free than anyone else, and their rights to say and believe what they want os absolute, as ling as they don’t infringe upon your right to safty, life etc..
If Apple wants to really cornor the market, then they should allow an explicit section for movies and apps. And fir all the parents who are worried about their kids seeing boobies on iTunes, Safari is even easier to use and you can find things worse than boobs or naked women, and don’t think your kids don’t know it.
From what I could tell in reading all the comments, NO ONE has picked up on the obvious.
Apple isn’t censoring anything. They are, to some degree editing what they deliver to the consumer, but that is based primarily on assuuring that each app being published abides by the agreements the developer ‘signed’ when they bought the right to become an Apple Developer. To my knowledge, for $99, anyone can get the right to develop for the Mac, iPhone, or iPad, publish the apps to their own devices and deliver whatever content they want to themselves. And no one is going to “come get them” as in F451.
No one (in this country) has ever been obliged to deliver content–that violates the concepts of free speech as much as a prohibition against publishing.
And I think the reference to 1984 was to the emergence of the Mac–which was portrayed as ending the Orwellian existence of the people.
@Nobama:
STFU!!!
I really think Apple will treat books differently from apps. Censoring books is a far more obvious first amendment violation than deciding what apps to sell or not sell. And you can’t bounce boobies on the cover of a book, can you?
The stupid is strong with this one. Apple distributes content and like any physical store Apple can choose to not distribute certain content, for whatever reasons.