Morisy dot com

The personal homepage of Michael Morisy, technology journalist.

Topic “censorship”

First they came for the bikinis ...

Submitted by michael morisy on Wed, 2010-03-10 15:02

Or rather, the lack thereof. A major German publisher, presumably in Apple's ranks of the exempted (a "well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format," as they put it to the Times), is pushing back on Apple's suggestion that they tone down their racy content.

Bild, Germany's daily "picture newspaper" tabloid since 1952, has had their "shake the Bild girl app" shaken from the App store for showing areolas, and the International Federation of the Periodical Press (FIPP) is considering a formal complaint, according to The Guardian.
Apple CensorshipThe app in question
The piece quotes Association of German Magazine Publishers chief executive Wolfgang Fuerstner by way of Der Spiegel*: "Publishers can't sell their soul just to get a few lousy pennies from Apple."

Nips are a no-no in most state-side tabloids and lad mags, but trying to export cultural standards elsewhere might be a dangerous game.

*I couldn't find this quote anywhere in the English-language Der Spiegel, so I'm taking it on the Guardian's word.

Adsense leading to censored stories?

Submitted by michael morisy on Thu, 2006-08-03 05:19

So theorizes Chris Thompson, a columnist for the East Bay Express.

He says that Google's practice of not running ads on risque pages with the word "kill" (and dozens of other unknown, proprietary blacklisted phrases) leads to stories being sanitized or outright spiked. One (anonymously cited) web publisher claims to have lost $7,000 in revenue because of a word infraction. Not quite chump change.

A simple solution is presented in the article, however:
"What we found in working with Google was that because some of our content violated its 'family-safe policy,' as a result we had to work with other partners such as Yahoo," says Kathryn Surso, Salon's vice president of business development.

Long live the free market.

Syndicate content
comments © the poster. all else © Michael Morisy or as attributed.

Please request permission for more than fair usage.

What Michael's been up to elsewhere ...