Microsoft has detailed some of its new policies to improve the Windows Phone Marketplace, and this one, about possibly sexual content, stood out to me: “We think the right solution is (a) to be transparent about what’s acceptable and (b) to show the right merchandise to the right customer in the right place. Our content policies are clearly spelled out: we don’t allow apps containing ‘sexually suggestive or provocative’ images or content. What we do permit is the kind of content you occasionally see on prime-time TV or the pages of a magazine’s swimsuit issue.” This is one of my major issues with application stores: American values are archaic and puritan compared to where I’m from, but the application stores we use are still subject to them. I wonder if two kissing men are considered to be “sexually suggestive”, “provocative”, “racy”, or “inappropriate” by American standards.
I really hate that american BS attitude towards naked people. As if seeing a naked human being messes with kids minds.
What we may need are rules against photoshopping the crap out of magazine/ad pictures, That might be a worthy discussion, but blatantly banning naked people is just stupid.
Typical american “think of the children” Ãœber-BS.
The ultimate goal of puritan* Americans is that all children can spend their childhood without ever seeing a female breast.
* (I believe one can’t set an overall judgement on a country as large as this)
Edited 2012-05-02 07:18 UTC
You can get images of kissing men and women and cats and horses and whatever you like on the web. You don’t need an app for that. The only function those apps have, is to serve ads and mine your phone for personal information, and add up on the total number of ‘apps’ available in the app store for corporate bragging rights.
Edited 2012-05-01 10:48 UTC
Then code for Android.
Microsoft and Apple have the right to run their program prisons as they want.
However, remember it isn’t just porn. It can be racism, sedition, or many other things they will ban depending on country. The United States is unique with its First Amendment freedom of speech.
Would you be so loud in your defense of (neo)Nazi apps to Germany, or to the USA? Tobacco apps? Methlab howtos?
Yes, because a few tits or kissing men is totally the same as nazism and meth. Totally.
As for tobacco – I don’t care. If people want to smoke, let them. It’s their body, not mine or the state’s.
Yeah, because no other country on Earth gives freedom of speech. God be blessed to have given humanity this single beacon of freedom in this barbaric world.
Never heard of the universal declaration of human rights – article 19 in particular -, eh?
In most countries, freedom of speech has lower protection than in the US. European countries for example often censor political speech. In many parts of Asia and South America, press freedom is additionally suffering from restrictions. And don’t get me started on Africa.
Most other countries, perhaps. He said the U.S. was unique, meaning no other country enjoys the same freedom of speech, which is patently untrue. The U.S. has a long tradition for state censorship (Hays code and McCarthyism, for instance), and ranks poorly on press freedom at the moment. But as long as people are living in a nationalist delusion of being #1 by default, not much will be done about that, of course.
Citation, please.
One high-profile example where US and European views on freedom of speech collided was the Yahoo! case in France, where the criminal code forbids dissemination and public display of certain (mostly Nazi) political symbols:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LICRA_v._Yahoo!
Other European countries have similar legislation which classifies certain political views as extremist and restricts their expression.
Note that I don’t say that this is necessarily a bad thing. It is just that these countries have other values that they hold in higher regard than freedom of speech.
And yet, US is far from the most free countries. And a lot of those evil European countries you mention are _more_ free.
I don’t say that US citizens have more freedom in total.
But there exist only few countries in the world who protect freedom of speech as vigorously (e.g. Canada). This is also true for freedom of religion.
In other regards (human rights, …) I agree that there exist European countries who do better.
I’ve owned a Windows Phone for some time now, and the market place has become ridden with stupid sexy woman apps and apps that use the name of others, such as netflix when they don’t provide netflix streaming.
I hope Microsoft do clear up the mess that has been created. However, I also think it should be a free market and have an option to opt-in to the market place to download at least the adult apps.
The trade mark name issue is something that is more a legal matter (via company) rather then a ‘who must not see’ matter.
Yes.