Apple censors Kama Sutra
I have never seen an e-reader in real life I’d like to own. The Kindle looks clunky and the instructions for getting books onto it are even worse. For that matter, I just don’t see the point of adding yet another thing to my list of things to carry. The only e-book readers that look to be worth using have been in fiction. Until I saw the video of Eucalyptus in action.
I cannot buy Eucalyptus yet, however. I can’t buy it because someone at Apple searched the Gutenberg archives for Victorian-era sex, found the Kama Sutra, and rejected the e-reader because someone might choose to download and read the Kama Sutra.
Even after having it explained to them that the Kama Sutra is not part of the application (ignoring for the moment that it’s a classic work from the 1800s) and that anyone can already search for it and download it using Safari or any other app that searches the web, Eucalyptus was rejected again.
Are Apple’s app store reviewers really this dense? Or are they actively blocking an e-reader for some reason only they know? Reading some of the iTunes App Store rejections, it sometimes seems as if there are subversive elements within Apple trying to prove that all of our fears about the App Store are right. It’s never good to have only one legal place to buy.
- May 24, 2009: Eucalyptus now available
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It took a personal call from an Apple representative, but the “problem” with Eucalyptus being rejected has been solved; whether this will make any difference in the future, though, we’ll see.
For the moment, I’m very happy. The app looks as useful on my iPod Touch as it did in the video, and I have now queued up My Man Jeeves, Frankenstein, Erewhon Revisited, and Chrome Yellow for reading.
- Eucalyptus
- “A ground-breaking new application coming soon to the iPhone and iPod Touch that puts over 20,000 classic books in the palm of your hand.”
- Regarding Eucalyptus: John Gruber at Daring Fireball
- “This might be the shittiest and most outrageous App Store rejection to date, and that’s saying something.”
- Whither Eucalyptus?: Jamie Montgomerie
- “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.”
More e-readers
- A gaming library in my pocket?
- The iBooks application, like, I suspect, all good e-reader software, lets you drag and drop PDFs and images into it.
- George Orwell’s incinerator
- Amazon shows by doing why digital restriction management on consumer items is a bad idea.
- Eucalyptus, revisited
- Eucalyptus is a great replacement for the paperback, not so great at using the fact that it’s a computer. But if you enjoy classics, I highly recommend it; it’s a beautiful e-reader for your iPhone/iPod Touch.
- Kindle owners are people who still want to read books
- Maybe it seems like a tautology to say that Kindle is for people who want to read books. But what if reading books is not the future of reading?
More iPhone
- Apple’s spinning mirror: exploiting children for dictatorships
- Apple has decided on “child porn” as the root password to disable privacy on their phones. But the system they’re using appears to be mostly worthless at detecting the exploitation of children, and very useful for detecting dissent from authoritarian governments.
- How does Apple’s supposed anti-conservative bias matter?
- If you think Apple has a bias against conservatives or Christians, you definitely don’t want Apple to build a tool its employees can use to help guess an iPhone’s password.
- Another reason to keep Flash off the iPhone
- I don’t know what Czerniak’s position is about Flash on the iPhone; I hope he’s against it, because if his opinions about Flash on Snow Leopard gain any traction, Flash will never be on any mobile device.
- iPhone review process squeezes out another one
- Apple’s iPhone review process has now rejected the English language for being objectionable.
- Eucalyptus, revisited
- Eucalyptus is a great replacement for the paperback, not so great at using the fact that it’s a computer. But if you enjoy classics, I highly recommend it; it’s a beautiful e-reader for your iPhone/iPod Touch.