How Apple could bite the free press | Dan Kennedy

Apple is hailed by many as saviour of the news industry, but its iPad and iPhone aren't entirely compatible with an open society What started out as a narrow dispute between Apple and software developers has turned into a raging controversy over free speech. The case of Mark Fiore , an editorial cartoonist who was banned from Apple's iTunes Store, illustrates a heretofore unappreciated connection between open systems and an open society. And it raises serious questions about Apple's supposed role as a saviour of the faltering news business. Our story begins on 12 April, when Fiore won a Pulitzer prize for his animated political cartoons at SFGate.com, the San Francisco Chronicle's website. A few days later Fiore, a freelancer, revealed to Laura McGann of the Nieman Journalism Lab that Apple had rejected an app he submitted the previous December for the iPhone and the iPod touch. The rejection meant that he had been effectively banned from Apple's latest toy, the iPad, as well. Apple had informed Fiore that his app violated the iTunes Store policy against content that "ridicules public figures", notwithstanding the fact that ridiculing public figures is pretty much the primary mission of any political cartoonist. Although Apple had previously attracted notice for rejecting apps, especially those with a sexual theme, the Fiore matter represented an escalation. Within a day, Apple had contacted Fiore and asked him to resubmit his app. "I feel kind of guilty," Fiore told the Wall Street Journal . "I'm getting preferential treatment because I got the Pulitzer." The trouble, as Fiore noted, is that Apple rectified its mistake while maintaining the right to ban any content it doesn't like from its new generation of closed-system devices. (Apple's signature computer, the Macintosh, is unaffected.) And there is a direct relationship between the battles Apple and its chairman, Steve Jobs, are waging against software developers and Apple's dispute with pornographers and other purveyors of content it doesn't like. The best-known example of the former involves Adobe, whose Flash animation software has been excluded from the iPhone, iPod and iPad. According to Apple, Flash hogs resources and makes its devices unstable – an assessment shared by many computer experts. Still, you'd think Apple might let its users decide whether or not to install Flash.

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How Apple could bite the free press | Dan Kennedy