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Comment by ericmay | Hacker News Reader

Why doesn’t Wal-Mart sell porn?

Why do they get to be the arbiter of what I can and can’t do?

In this case, it's Walmart telling the shop down the street they shouldn't be allowed to sell porn because someone might read it while wearing a Walmart t-shirt.

Well it’s more like a vendor comes in and sets up shop in Wal-Mart to sell products because the government mandates it, and now that vendor is selling porn.

You buy the phone from Apple. Ostensibly this means you own it. Why then is it them setting up shop in Walmart, and not setting up shop in the mall you own and bought?

Yep, and you can do anything you want to it! That doesn't mean that Apple or Nintendo or Steam has to do things that support your specific use case. Of course governments can regulate things, but that applies to any industry or product.

> Malls

The mall analogy doesn't work well because Apple isn't a mall in this case but more like a Wal-Mart. They aim to own the entire experience including the distribution of applications on the device. In the mall analogy Apple would own the mall and then each store could be viewed as an app that they allow in the mall.

Malls also limit what stores/apps can operate in them and have lots of rules. Where I live one of our more prominent malls requires tenants who are renting space at the mall to completely refresh the space or vacate after a certain number of years. Malls can arbitrarily raise rent and operating fees on the various shops within them too.

The owner of the mall/phone gets to choose the stores in it. So Apple gets to have a store, and they get to choose not to sell porn apps, but there's the European store in the mall, and it seems they're a bit different and they choose to sell porn apps.

Sure you own an iPhone and you can choose to do whatever you want to it. That doesn't mean Apple has to support it outside of whatever the government mandates.

I'm not following your point now on the analogy. I thought we were talking about Apple and not individuals?

Walmart isn’t the only store.

Is the iPhone the only mobile phone?

Yes it pretty much is. This is why your comparison doesn’t work that well. Also in a physical store you can’t shield the rest of the customers from the content some want but others don’t. So your companies no sense really.

> Also in a physical store you can’t shield the rest of the customers from the content some want but others don’t. So your companies no sense really.

Sure you can. In Ohio the state controls liquor distribution so if you want to buy liquor at a grocery store you have to go into a separate area. Rated M games (when I was growing up at least) were locked in special cases. Sometimes truck stop stations sell pornography and it's behind the counter with a cover on it.

> Yes it pretty much is.

It's not.

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