I’ve often said (to myself in imaginary conversations with people who care what I think of public issues) that pornography isn’t everywhere online, but sometimes it feels as if it is. That’s why the best web filter is your own mind, which doesn’t help our kids who don’t have minds yet.
Steve Jobs shocked some Net-citizens by saying Apple’s iPad and iPhone won’t have porn apps. He said in an email, “Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin’, and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away.”
As Eric Felton points out, Jobs may be promising more than he can deliver. “As long as one of the Apple Apps is an Internet browser, the bawdy side of web will still be accessible on iPhones and iPads. Still, just because Mr. Jobs won’t be able to purge his devices of blue content, that doesn’t mean he’s obliged to distribute it himself.”
A Gawker.com reporter accused Jobs of imposing his morality on us, to which Mr. Felton writes: “What a peculiar—and peculiarly modern—controversy. Is it really such an affront to the rights of those who would buy and sell pornography that someone might want the right to choose not to?”
In slightly related news, a jobs bill from the Democrats in Washington, intended “to increase investments in science, research and training programs,” was scuttled after Republicans amended it to hold back on some of the funding and to deny any funding “to salaries to those officially disciplined for violations regarding the viewing, downloading, or exchanging of pornography, including child pornography, on a federal computer or while performing official government duties.”
There are two approaches for content production:
1. Garden world, where some kind of organization filters the content to decide what is good for you.
2. Internet, where anybody can publish to everybody.
Steve Jobs has a perfect right to build a garden world device. But I wouldn’t buy it. It might consider something evil when I don’t.
Jobs is talking about malware, spyware, and pornography, which are all of the same, and it only applies to apps on these devices. How does your critique apply to his decision to reject skinbot apps, despite the fact that the same material can be obtained through the web brower?
And the iPad and iPhone are not producing content. They are distributing it. Why can’t we make moral decisions for the content distribution devices we own, by which I mean own like Jobs owns Apple.
I made a mistake. Garden world vs. Internet usually applies to content distribution, not the production.
We can make moral decisions for the content distribution channels we own. Jobs has a perfect right to reject applications that are pornographic, or that encourage racial intolerance. He also has the right to reject applications that contain politically incorrect ideas or promote the view that one culture or religion is superior to another.
I’m not sure that Jobs’ idea of what is offensive will always correspond to my own. So while I perfectly accept his right to determine which applications will be allowed on the iPhone (which is limited to app store applications unless you jailbreak it), I will not buy one. If I pay to own a device, I want to control what it can and cannot do. Even if I agree with somebody’s judgment today, I am not confident I will agree with them tomorrow.
I’d rather argue for agreement on moral absolutes than continue to permit the wildness we have now, at least, where pornography is concerned.
Here’s a related video from Judge Napolitano’s Freedom Watch, which discusses the issue of pornography and such things under the law.
I’d rather argue for agreement on moral absolutes than continue to permit the wildness we have now, at least, where pornography is concerned.
If I knew it would stop with pornography, I couldn’t care less. But why should it? There a plenty of other things that people consider offensive.
Yes, there are. I think my problem in this argument is that I mostly agree with you, and I’m trying to think it through another way. I want to use the law to crush the sex industry, but I don’t think I can honestly argue for it. But I don’t think the free market will cut it back, because we are an immmoral people. We have allowed advertisers to present almost entirely naked women in dept. store and teen clothing companies to have nudity in their catalogs and argued that the dumb puritans who don’t like it can shop somewhere else.
How much poison will the well water absorb before we’re all sick?
I keep thinking of this in terms of the civil rights bill in 1964. For centuries, black families were marginalized by people in the free market. Goldwater was arguing against it on moral and economic grounds, which is good, but can we not write moral laws to fight dangerous immorality like this?
Sorry, I’m not writing clearly. It’s a difficult subject.