Steve Jobs is a 21st Century Bowdleriser

Censorship is insidious and ridiculous. Apple is blocking an application for the iPhone which would let you read Open Source books such as texts available from Project Guttenberg. Why? Because this would let you access "offensive material". Odd... Safari is licensed for iPhone and it can access the very same offensive material, but Apple does not block that application.

Here's a bit from a blog that goes into a great deal of depth on this issue. You can read the correspondence between the developer and Apple. If you didn't think Steve Jobs is a bowdleriser, then read on and see...

If you’re wondering why Eucalyptus is not yet available, it’s currently in the state of being ‘rejected’ for distribution on the iPhone App Store. This is due to the fact that it’s possible, after explicitly searching for them, to find, download from the Internet, and then read texts that Apple deems ‘objectionable’. The example they have given me is a Victorian text-only translation of the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana. For the full background, a log of my communications with Apple is below.

To give a bit of background about Eucalyptus itself, it doesn’t ‘contain’ books any more than a newly bought iPod ‘contains’ songs. It provides an easy-to-use way to find and download classic books, then presents them a beautiful, readable (I would say the most beautiful, and most readable, but I’m biased of course) way. Check out the videos at eucalyptusapp.com if you haven’t seen them. The books are all text-only, and are directly downloaded from the archives of the well-respected Project Gutenberg.

The exact book (the Kama Sutra) that Apple considers the ability to read ‘objectionable’ is freely available on the iPhone in many ways already. You can find it through Safari or the Google app of course, but it is also easily available via other book reading apps. You can get it easily via eReader, though the search process is handled by launching a third-party site in Safari, with the download and viewing taking place in eReader. Stanza offers up multiple versions, some with illustrated covers. Amazon’s Kindle app, the latest version of which was approved by Apple this week, offers multiple versions too - although it does charge from 80¢ to $10 per book - and you again purchase via Safari before Kindle downloads the book.

I am at a loss to explain why Eucalyptus is being treated differently than these applications by Apple. I’m also frankly amazed that they would suggest I should be manually censoring content that is being downloaded from the public Internet - classic, even ancient, books, no less.

I guess Steve Jobs thinks that Sharia law is a good idea. You simply impose your morals on everybody around you because you "know" you are right and you could care less whether there is any relevant fact or thought that might cause a rational person to pause. Nope. Jobs and Apple apparantly have become brownshirts who are going to crack heads to get rid of riffraff and untermenschen. It is good to see that an American corporation has decided to become judge, jury, and executioner for a new moral movement that will purge Americans of smut and wrong-thinking. From now on, Dr. Kellog and Steve Jobs are going to make sure we take our purgatives each morning and eat only healthy puffed wheat morning, noon, and night.