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Comment by danh | Hacker News Reader

> My bet is that they know what they're doing.

Apple has become a company that stands for censorship. I hate to be associated with that.

The fact that the censorship is a conscious decision by Apple makes it even worse.

Apple has yet to censor anything. They have only rejected certain things from being sold in their store. If you think that is censorship then you must think that virtually every retailer in the world also stands for censorship.

I think the reason the parent poster rendered that opinion has to do with the calculus - real or imagined - that stands behind Apple's particular choice of things to reject, and the common attributes that unite the sort of thing they tend to reject. Or, at least, the stuff that's made the headlines lately. It seems to have to do with things that allow you to use their devices more "freely" and/or do more and/or access more.

I don't think "censorship" is quite the correct term for that, but you can see where the idea arises that Apple is not just acting as a retailer that wants to sell certain products and not others in its store, but specifically wants to limit products that have to do with openness of information and freedom of use.

Whether you agree with that assessment or not, that's what drives people to use terms like "censorship" to describe it.

Just a short time ago I heard a couple of interviews with people who worked in Spanish radio stations during the Franco dictatorship. They described all the inane rules they had to follow to appease the censors: songs that contained any hint of sex, atheism, "un-spanishness", etc. could not be broadcasted. But none of them knew exactly which the forbidden words were; the censors seemed to make up the rules as they went along. A given song could be allowed by one censor, and forbidden by the next. If the "transgression" was too serious, you lost your job (or more).

All this was, of course, entirely lawful.

Their stories reminded me a little bit too much of recent events.

Because Apple is the government and enforces it's decisions with the threat of violent reprisal, right? This is ridiculous.

You trivialize the actions of an opressive dictatorship when you liken it to inconvenience of using a dictionary that lacks the term "Dirty Sanchez". (This being an example of a term present in Wiktionary but redacted from Ninjawords by Ninjawords.)

A lot of retailers do engage in censorship, i.e. Wal-Mart and music. What else do you call it when I go to Wal-Mart, and they have mostly the same CD I can buy at Hastings except with all the bad words removed?

That is was I was referring to, yes. And? Why call it censorship, when the act of denying access to shelf space does not actually alter the content? Why should the retailer not have the right to choose what they sell? It's nonsense.

It does alter the content: when I buy a CD at Hastings and a CD at Wal-Mart, the Wal-Mart CD is identical except with the naughty words bleeped out.

This is a distinct case from Wal-Mart not selling, for instance, $100 models of the Enterprise-D or motion-sensitive lightsabers.

Wal-Mart does not alter the recordings. They have no right to. Record companies that wish to sell their music at Wal-Mart choose to alter their recordings for that purpose.

That's how the government operates, too. The government doesn't actually alter things--it just prohibits their publication or distribution. In affect, the government (and Wal-Mart) delegate the actual alterations to the producers of the content, which is a nice gesture but still censorship.

(The government does actively censor soldiers' letters home to remove sensitive information.)

Conflating private enterprise with government is as fallacious as it ever was. A retailer does not prohibit publication or distribution and does not enforce it's decisions with the threat of violence or imprisonment. It decides what it is and isn't willing to sell. Why is that wrong? Why should they not have the right to do that? Would your opinion change if it were a locally owned sole proprietorship and not Wal-Mart?

I'm not conflating anything. Censorship by the government is violation of human rights. Censorship by private business is usually not. But it is censorship.

In other words, private censorship isn't necessarily wrong. I never argued it was.

People need to learn how to separate descriptive factual concepts like "to censor" from normative moral concepts of right and wrong. We all censor ourselves--for instance, I am censoring myself from flaming you. Likewise, television networks censor their programs, Wal-Mart censors the music they sell, Apple censors the App Store, the military censors letters home from the troops, and the FCC censors the airwaves. Some of these instances of censorship are good, some of these instances are bad, and that's an entirely separate moral argument. It's lazy, imprecise, and duplicitous thinking to couple the concept of "censorship" so tightly with the concept of "wrong" that you can't meaningfully use the word half the time.

You are ignoring the distinctions between censorship by or on behalf of government actors and that by private enterprise or individuals in favor of arguing that because the same word can be used it is impossible to refer to them seperately.

This in spite of the fact that the word is almost universally used to refer to censorship by government authority (usually in a perjorative context) and that the context of the thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=750540) lends itself entirely to reading it as an immoral act. Your "entirely separate moral argument" is in fact the one started at the top of the thread. It was in fact the one I was engaged in before being derailed.

"You are ... arguing that because the same word can be used it is impossible to refer to them seperately."

No I'm not--I'm maintaining that distinction the whole way down ("one is a violation of civil and human rights, one is not").

Here's the moral argument made at the top of the thread by codyrobbins:

"If Apple wants to censor apps in the App Store, that's their prerogative."

Here's your argument:

"Apple has yet to censor anything."

I agree with codyrobbins, but I disagree with you. What's so complicated with that? You're repeating yourself and failing to even comprehend my posts. In addition, you've attributed opinions to me I haven't even expressed and thrown out tons of red herrings to boot.

I'm maintaining that distinction the whole way down

Then why do you insist on ignoring the distinction when I use the term? I mean one thing, but you claim I mean the other.

By censor I was referring to censorship a presumably immoral violation of rights such as that done by government, which is how the post I replied to used the term, how the term is most often used, and the only way that makes sense in what you agree started as a moral argument. It is what I have meant the entire time.

If Walmart chooses to not sell certain CDs that I want to play in my car, I can go across the street to Best Buy, or online, and buy them there.

If Amazon chooses to not sell certain software I can go to the manufacturer's site and buy and install it from there.

The app store on the iPhone is the only legitimate source to make an application purchase for the entire platform. Your analogy does not hold.

What difference does it make in terms of Apple's right to choose what they sell in their store? You're taking it as a given that the platform should be open, but that, too, is their right to decide. They are not obligated to have such a store at all. Likewise, you are not obligated to buy an iPhone.

There are direct parallels with Xbox Live Marketplace, Wii Shop, and the PlayStation Store, as even more directly in the mobile stores operated by every mobile carrier. Are these companies engadging in censorship? Some of them ::gasp:: don't even sell any dictionaries!

The point is that this kind of thing goes on all around you every day and people don't seem to mind until someone starts calling it censorship. And to what end but fury? I don't understand the purpose of moral outrage over something that is merely inconvenient.

Inconvenience can sometimes equal undesirability. I think you'll find a lot of the proponents against closed platforms have the same critiques against consoles.

I actually have the same critiques of the Playstation, XBox, Wii, and every other closed harware devices that has been deliberately limited in its functionality.

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