[stingraycharles]

Because Apple makes it very clear in their TOS that they don't want that. And obviously, the iSinglePayer app is politically charged. The developer of the app decided to develop it anyway, and now he's claiming he's being censored.

It's kind of silly, actually. People seem to think they have some fundamental right to be approved into the AppStore, which is simply not the case.

[tjogin]

How does making something clear in a TOS not make this censorship?

Censorship, as defined by Wikipedia: "Censorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor."

How is this not censorship on Apple's behalf? I'm not saying they're not in their right to censor the content on their AppStore, I'm just saying it is censorship.

[stingraycharles]

Okay, according to that definition, you may be right. Ultimately, I think it's up to a judge to decide; censorship is not as black and white.

Take Google for example. They automatically filter various type of sites from their index (phishing, link farms, etc). According to the definition on Wikipedia, that is censorship too: it's communicative material, which is considered harmful by Google.

[tjogin]

Why would the definition of the word 'censorship' be up to a judge to decide? And why would a judge be involved at all? It isn't illegal to censor something.

The fact that this is censorship doesn't mean that Apple aren't in their right to do so. They are, as much as I dislike it.

Voicing one's discontent with their policy is probably the only way we can make them change it, though.

[stingraycharles]

Ok in that case, indeed, censorship can be applied. But to me, that means it completely loses its value: in essence, it would be the same as "filtering", which I don't think is the intent of the law.

[tjogin]

(For some reason I can't reply to your last post, so I reply here instead.)

No, censorship is not illegal. Freedom of speech protects your right to speak without getting silenced or punished for it (with some limits, like hate speech) by the government.

But your freedom of speech does not imply that you are free to express anything in any private arena. For instance, on this board we are not allowed to use inflammatory language or basically be douches in any way. This does not conflict with freedom of speech, because you are free to express your inflammatory opinions somewhere else, like on your own blog or in your own kitchen.

Freedom of speech does not give you the right to publicize anything on any private platform anywhere (like the App Store).

[stingraycharles]

Okay, so if I understand you correctly, freedom of speech is violated by censorship, but censorship doesn't always violate freedom of speech.

Guess my interpretation for the word always was wrong. I figured censorship meant the act of limiting freedom of speech; you seem to define censorship as any act of filtering.

Would you classify Google's filtering of web content as censorship ? If not, how is that different from Apple filtering AppStore applications ?

[tjogin]

Intent of what law? How does the law even come into this?

[stingraycharles]

You mean censorship isn't illegal in the US ? As far as I was aware, censorship is outlawed in most Western countries, by protecting freedom of speech.

[anigbrowl]

The problem is that there are approved iPhone apps which are overtly politically charged, like this one: http://www.conservativetalkingpoints.com/

So there's obviously a double standard, though I'd guess it's at the level of individual reviewers rather than Apple policy.