Jason Grigsby wrote an excellent article on Cloud Four about the significance of Apple’s rejection of Freedom Time that anyone who is interested in Apple’s App Store policies, or corporations and censorship should take a look at.
Thanks Jason, I am glad that someone gets the real issue, and I won’t even take issue with “simple, stupid”:
Can you imagine political discourse of any significance that doesn’t include demeaning or attacking political figures? Like it or not, that’s part of the exchange of ideas that form a democracy.
This policy essentially bans any editorial cartoons—cartoons that have been part of America’s history since its inception….
Freedom of speech is easy to defend when the speech is popular, but the real test comes when you have to defend unpopular speech or things that you don’t agree with.
In Fall 2008, George Bush had the worst approval ratings since Nixon. At a time in which we had one of the most unpopular Presidents in American history, Apple didn’t have the courage to approve a simple, stupid application like Freedom Time.
What is the likelihood that Apple would approve a truly controversial and unpopular application during a time when popular opinion makes it difficult to stand up for what’s right?
Thanks Alec. I actually looked all over your site for a way to contact you before I posted it.
Felt bad about that the simple, stupid line, but I couldn’t find another way to express what I meant. It’s not that the application is stupid. Nor that it was simple to build.
But that in the grand scheme of things, the application and its message isn’t that big a deal. It was meant to be simple fun. It is hard to believe it would cause any controversy.
Anyways, I struggled with that sentence a bit. Probably should have kept at it to find a different way to express what I meant.
Not at all, Jason, not at all — it *was* simple and stupid.
The programming was also stupid—or let’s say naive— as it was my first iPhone project before i really knew what i was doing and it probably had a memory leak.