Apple Censors Ulysses App In Time For Bloomsday

Miracle Jones writes "Apple has censored a 'Ulysses' comic book app — just in time for 'Bloomsday' — because of a picture of Buck Mulligan's stately, plump cartoon penis. Not since Amazon removed digital copies of '1984' from people's Kindles while they slept has there been such a hilarious episode in the ongoing slapstick farce 'Let's See What Happens When Corporations Become Publishers.'"

Ironic

[grizdog]

This is ironic because Ulysses not only was the cause for stricter pornography laws in the United States, when it was first published not as a book but in serialized form, but it was also the book that was used to get the laws struck down. Although the Ulysses case itself never went to the Supreme Court, it did influence later cases that did wind up in the Supreme Court.

Maybe Apple could have an Ulysses app with all the nasty bits removed. Or better yet, a Bowdlerization filter that would transform any book into something absolutely harmless.

Re:Ironic

[MrAtoz]

Exactly so. The case was United States v. One Book Called Ulysses [wikipedia.org]. The gist of the ruling was that the book was not obscene because it had merit as a work of literary art. Judge Woolsey's ruling was an eloquent defense of contemporary (for then) literary art. Once the book was no longer banned in the US, the UK and Ireland followed suit and allowed unexpurgated versions. What is doubly ironic here is that the case was engineered by Random House in order to be able to publish the book freely through the US without being prosecuted for pornography. Wow -- look at the difference today! What publisher would challenge the government and culture in this manner today? Instead, Apple seeks to create a Digital Disneyland [freedom-to-tinker.com] where everyone can have a fully predictable, enjoyable, inoffensive, and commercially lucrative (for Apple) time.

Re:iPhone vs the rest -- VHS vs Betamax

[robably]

But nobody is having a problem getting porn on to their iPhone - it has a browser on it with unrestricted access to all the porn in the world. Who is finding porn so hard to find on the internet that they need an _app_ for it?

Re:And this is different to Walmart....

[vlm]

The difference is if I want to put objectionable stuff on a Kindle/Nook that I can't buy it through Amazon/B&N, I can get it elsewhere and read it without rooting the device.

New to the ipod? Never heard of bookz? No need to "root the device"

http://www.iphonebookz.com/ [iphonebookz.com]

or just search for "bookz"

You can't, as far as I know, pay money for "objectionable stuff", but you most certainly don't need to "root the device" to put "objectionable stuff" on it.

Re:And this is different to Walmart....

[mdwh2]

I think you're arguing on the same side here - yes, exactly, there are other better alternatives out there. But that's why people are criticising Apple here, and it's right to do so, so that people are aware of those alternatives (whilst there are many bigger phone sellers to Apple, some people here seem to think that the Iphone is the only phone that can access the Internet, etc).

When people criticise Windows, you don't say "Why are you criticising Windows, you could just use Linux" - on the contrary, the fact that Linux is out there is even more reason to criticise Windows. Similarly, the fact that Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, LG, RIM, Google, Microsoft and basically every company in the phone market except Apple don't have this problem adds to the criticism - Apple can't respond with "but that's what everyone else does too".

Re:Android

[nschubach]

Aren't publishers already corporations?

Re:Android

[CharlyFoxtrot]

You're kiding right ? There are several [bitolithic.com] readers [panelfly.com] out there including for jailbroken [comicreader.mobi] phones and open source [google.com]. Then there's a couple of options to self [kobobooks.com] publish [lulublog.com] through some vendors or as an independant [blogspot.com] straight through Apple.

Sure there are times when making app might provide some added value [tuaw.com] but to call it the easiest way is simply not true.

Re:Android

[Voyager529]

Just a few quibbles here...

-RIM has App World.
-Nokia has the largest marketshare worldwide for handset sales.
-Microsoft *DOES* have a market place for 6.x...actually it's called Windows Mobile Marketplace.

That said, Apple has the commanding lead over MOBILE APP SALES vs. anyone else listed, regardless of the fact that they aren't the top dog in HANDSET sales.

As a tangential point, I do wonder if Apple's colorful pie charts also include app sales for the iPod Touch, which certainly must account for a nontrivial percentage of the sales figures.