Steve Jobs and his anti porn campaign on the iPad

In this article from The Guardian, Steve Jobs, head of Apple is campaigning and vowed to make the iPad censored, as he feels that children can access it easily and can influence them in the wrong way.

Quotes from the article

Steve Jobs is hardly shy of a battle – and his latest target is pornography. He wants to keep it off Apple products.

"Many magazine publishers developing "apps" for the new iPad... have had to self-censor".

"... the iPad version is mockingly known as "the Iranian version", because of the amount of censorship required to get it approved for Apple's App Store".

"Germany's Stern magazine saw its app pulled because it runs topless photo spreads."

"You know, there's a porn store for Android [phones using Google's software]. You can download porn, your kids can download porn. That's a place we don't want to go – so we're not going to go there."

"It is not only porn that seems to trouble Apple. In the last few months, it has banned an app with political cartoons (by a Pulitzer-winning cartoonist – though it quickly relented), and a gay travel guide to New York (too much skin, and an unflattering caricature of Sarah Palin)".

"Apple points to section 3.3.17 of its developer agreement: "Materials . . . that in Apple's reasonable judgment may be found objectionable; [eg] materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic or defamatory."

"... given that the iPad includes a web browser, cannot help but let the monster of porn and donkey of defamation clatter in, no matter how hard you try to keep them out".

"I don't want 'freedom from porn'. Porn is just fine! And I think my wife would agree."

"You might care more about porn when you have kids . . ."

Apple controls exactly what appears on its App Store; to make that match the clean lines of its products and adverts, it needs to enforce a "clean" approach to content.

"Would an app of images of famous classical art nudes be acceptable? Will the big names be treated more leniently than the smaller ones? There was at least an outward appearance of a double standard involving Playboy and Sports Illustrated in the iPhone App Store when Apple's rules were tightened earlier in the year."

Phil Schiller, Apple's vice-president of marketing, made the rather weak claim earlier this year that the reason they were allowed – and others were banned – was that they came from "a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format".

"... how well-known do you have to be, exactly, for Apple to decide your content is OK? To that, there isn't an answer. But Jobs might email one soon".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/may/25/ipad-porn-free-steve-jobs?INTCMP=SRCH