Techdirt. Stories filed under "nudity"

Apple Threatens To Kick Out Comic Book App Over 'Adult' Content, Forcing Publisher To Pull 40% Of Its 4,000 Titles

Tim Cushing — Mon, 8 Apr 2013 12:50:00 PDT

Apple's worked very hard cultivating its walled garden and it isn't going to let a bunch of creators ruin its pristine utopia with nudity, depictions of sweatshops, nudity (again), swearing, topical commentary, competitive apps and the ancient art of intricate lovemaking.

Once again, Apple has decided to arbitrarily boot more content out of its garden, expressing its concern that things might be getting a little too sexy for its apparent target audience of schoolchildren who have never browsed the internet.

Reports are coming in that the digital comics distributor Izneo has had to radically prune their catalog or face banishment from iTunes.

Izneo has been selling digital comics on the iPad since they released an iPad app in mid-2010, and they successfully built a catalog of over 4000 French and Belgian titles.

Everything was going fine until late Friday night when one of Apple’s censors noticed that Izneo sold adult comics. And since Apple clearly cannot allow their precious iPad to be sullied by salacious content, the censor gave Izneo 30 hours to remove all adult comics.

Like other Apple takedown requests, this one arrived with no warning and no clear indication as to what content Apple felt was inappropriate and should be removed.

IDBoox broke the story earlier today, and they report that Izneo had absolutely no warning that there was a problem or guidance as to which titles needed to be removed. All they were reportedly told by Apple was that the adult content had to go, so Izneo drastically pruned any comic that showed a breast, cleavage, and even ones with characters evoking a suggestive gesture.

In order to comply with this incredibly vague request, Izneo immediately pulled 2,800 of its 4,000 titles. After a more in-depth review of its content, Izneo restored about half of what it had dumped, bringing it back up to 2,500. That's still 1,500 titles pulled because Apple said, "Jump," and couldn't even be bothered to specify how high.

Now, Izneo is stuck in a bit of a bind. It can abide by Apple's ethereal "guidelines" and hope that it doesn't need to remove even more titles. Or, it can start looking at a few options to get around the walled garden while still remaining somewhat ensconced. Nate Hoffelder suggests it switch to an HTML-5 reading app, or better yet, simply stop selling titles from within the app. This will allow Izneo to avoid Apple's app censoring while also bypassing the "opportunity" to toss 30% of the in-app purchase Apple's way.

As long as Apple is going to continue to behave like a stern parent in need of mood stabilizers, app developers and content creators are going to find themselves on the receiving end of vague missives like these. Apple is, of course, welcome to run its business however it sees fit, but every story like this serves as a warning to developers: if you want to play in Apple's garden, you'll have to abide by the nebulous, arbitrary rules. Apple has stated that if game developers want to handle serious issues (like the Syrian War), they should write a book instead. What is it going to tell comic book creators whose artwork veers into adult areas? Fire up the keyboard and turn those pictures into 1,000 words?

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No Nudity: Playboy's iPhone App To Test Men's 'For The Articles' Excuse

Timothy Geigner — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:03:29 PST

Looking back, I think I saw my first Playboy magazine when I was roughly ten years old or so. That would put us somewhere in the early 90's. My friends and I stopped on our way to school and huddled around each other, all trying to get a glimpse of the in-depth article on Operation Desert Storm and it's long-reaching implications for the Middle East, American foreign policy, and the rest of the world. No...wait...now I remember. We wanted to see the naked girls, because these were the days before wide internet adoption would put roughly all the porn at everyone's fingertips and President Bush's name still made us giggle (it kind of still does, actually). That said, amongst older generations, you would occasionally hear the laughable excuse from men that they wanted their Playboy magazines so they could read the articles, I suppose because Time Magazine, The New Yorker and Newsweek didn't exist (psst! They did!).

Well, now it appears we'll get something of a test for that excuse, with Playboy releasing a mobile app for Apple's app store, which of course had to nix all the nipples and vaginas to get it past the tech company's Quaker-like regulators.

This winter, the company, long barred from Apple's digital storefronts because of its pornographic associations, will package a nudity-free version of its content together for the launch of its first iPhone app, featuring lifestyle tips, articles from the magazine and, of course, photos of beautiful women.

Those beautiful women will be clad in lingerie, under Apple's strict no boobies policy. Now, here's why this probably won't work. Nobody is going to download this app to see women in lingerie. There's a couple of reasons for this. First, we've long been able to get that elsewhere. Victoria Secret has an iOS app, after all. Also, there's that handy browser option for viewing all the images one could want on the internet. As for the articles, we have a couple of problems. Jumping into the news content business this late in the game and having success in it would require really compelling articles. The good news is that Playboy still has this. The bad news is that all those people who claim their allegiance to Playboy for their articles are full of crap. As the article summarizes:

So, mobile readers will have to actually read Playboy for the articles, with a little lingerie on the side. This could totally work. What could go wrong?

The answer, of course, is everything.

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Apparently Stripping Nude To Protest TSA Search Is Protected By The First Amendment

Mike Masnick — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 12:35:00 PDT

A few months ago, you may have heard about John Brennan, who was going through Portland International Airport, and felt that the TSA screening procedures were the equivalent of harassing him. In response, to protest, he stripped naked... and was promptly arrested for disorderly conduct and indecent exposure. However, a court has now acquitted Brennan by saying that the stripping was an act of public protest, and thus protected by the First Amendment. The judge pointed out that there's already state precedent in Oregon that anti-nudity laws "do not apply in cases of protest."

"It is the speech itself that the state is seeking to punish, and that it cannot do," Circuit Judge David Rees said.

The DA who prosecuted the case is complaining that now anyone arrested for indecent exposure can just claim that it's a protest.

Deputy District Attorney Joel Petersen argued that Brennan only spoke of a protest minutes later. Petersen urged the judge to recognize that distinction, "otherwise any other person who is ever naked will be able to state after the fact" that it was done in protest.

Of course, this now raises the troubling (or appealing, depending on your nature) idea that stripping at the front of the TSA line may become more popular. That said, if you're now... er... itching to disrobe in front of the TSA, it's worth noting that this ruling is specific to Oregon, and who knows how other states might deal with the same issue.

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Should YouTube Allow Artful Nudity?

Mike Masnick — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:53:47 PST

The EFF and the National Coalition Against Censorship are apparently asking YouTube to consider changing its policy with regards to nudity. Apparently, it will allow nudity if the video is from a film or TV show -- but not if it's user generated videos made for YouTube. Separately, YouTube suggests it will allow nudity with "some educational, documentary and scientific content, but only if that is the sole purpose of the video and it is not gratuitously graphic." The problem, according to the EFF and NCAC, is that there is no exception for work that is artistic in nature, and apparently YouTube recently removed the videos of a well-known artist, Amy Greenfield, for violating the "no nudity" policy. Now, this isn't actually a "censorship" issue, since YouTube is a private site, and not the government. So, honestly, I don't see any problem with YouTube deciding that it doesn't want that particular content on its site, but there is a separate issue raised here -- which is that, once again, the real issue is Google's lack of customer service -- something we've seen a lot of lately. One of the complaints is that Greenfield's videos were taken down with no recourse and no method for her to communicate with folks at YouTube to talk about getting them back online.

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How Kevin Martin Got Over A Million People To Look At A Woman's Naked Buttocks

Mike Masnick — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:55:00 PST

Since taking over the FCC, Kevin Martin has supposedly been against regulations -- except in two areas: the cable industry and "indecency." He's been a strong proponent of cracking down on whatever he considers indecent programming, and much of his support for a la carte cable is based on how it might block indecent content. The latest crackdown on indecency has a number of people shaking their heads. It involves fining ABC affiliates $1.43 million for a brief clip of the TV show "NYPD Blue," that aired in February of 2003, and included images of a naked woman from behind. Of course, if Martin really was trying to protect people from viewing such indecent content, perhaps he shouldn't have issued this fine. After all, it was shown on TV nearly five years ago. By now, most people would have forgotten about it... unless, of course, the FCC were to bring the clip back into the news, getting someone to put it on YouTube, and driving well over a million viewers to watch the video since the fine was announced.

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