Apple and Microsoft on a Mission to Stamp out Porn

For once it looks like Steve & Steve actually agree on something. For a month now, Apple has been leading a strict crackdown on pornographic applications, while Microsoft will be banning any content of a sexual nature from its store for Windows Phone 7 smartphones.

It looks like American puritanism is now rearing its head in the world of technology, with pornography its main target. Some of our kinkier readers may have noticed that it's impossible to download X-rated applications to the iPhone, and now it seems that handsets running Microsoft's new OS, due for release in the autumn, will be subject to a similar kind of censorship.

Power to the Prudes

In its contract with developers, Microsoft lays down the law very clearly, stipulating that no violent or obscene content will get past its stringent security checks.

Seemingly inspired by Apple's similar policy, Microsoft will be keeping a close eye on the store's content, and will categorically refuse any application with questionable morals. The contract clearly states that full-on, or even just suggestive nudity will see applications instantly banned.

The freedom to choose?

As any kind of 'obscene' literature or text won't make it past these strict new controls, it'll be out with the likes of Jacky Collins and Mills & Boon, not to mention more highbrow works like Sade's Philosophy in the Bedroom. By choosing what we can and cannot have access to, Apple and Microsoft are effectively imposing a certain idea of what they think 'culture' should be. That's a little frightening when you think about it, and it's verging on the kind of censorship seen in some of history's darker moments.

The list of banned subject matter is as long as a Barbara Cartland's bibliography. In fact, sex and nudity aren't the only targets of this moral policing, as weapons, blood and guts are all just as unwelcome. Talk about an American paradox! Just imagine how difficult it'll be for certain video games publishers to follow the strict terms of the developers' contract. Maybe they could replace the blood with some kind of green slime and swap the guns for brooms ...

Apple and Microsoft, however, seem to have no doubts at all about the nature of their actions. But while these two giant corporations are free to impose their own rules on their industrial partners, how can they possibly justify imposing their view of what's morally acceptable on users all over the world? Surely that's more indecent that any kind of immoral content?


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