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Kudos to Apple for Saying No to Porn

By Joshua Mercer 

Apple’s tablet style computer, the iPad, is this summer’s hot ticket consumer item. Millions of Americans love this handy device for reading books, watching movies, and sharing pictures with friends.

The publishing industry has been reeling for the last few years as people opt to read articles online for free. Newspapers across the country are going bankrupt. But media companies are hoping that consumers will pay for apps that deliver newspaper articles or magazine subscriptions right to their iPad.

Yet customers who buy Playboy on their iPad might be in for a surprise. The smut publishing company just released the iPad version of the magazine. But there’s a catch: The iPad version of Playboy will not contain any explicit photos.

Why would Playboy do this?

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has established a strict no obscenity rule for iPad and iPhone apps, and the company will remove any app – and they already have – that they consider “obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory.”

Ryan Tate, a blogger with Gawker.com, denounced Steve Jobs for “censorship.”

Surprisingly, the normally secretive Steve Jobs replied in an email to Tate, saying that his products are about freedom, including a “freedom from porn.”

The email exchange continued. Tate told Jobs: “[Y]ou know what? I don't want 'freedom from porn.' Porn is just fine. And I think my wife would agree."

But Jobs didn’t back down.

“[Y]ou might care about porn when you have kids,” Jobs told Tate.

What an upside down world we live in. Pornography is accessible everywhere. The Internet, of course, has made obscene material easier to find than ever. Yet along comes one businessman who says: I’m not interested in making money this way. And instantly people cry “censorship.”

We were told for decades not to “impose our morality” – that people have a “right” to buy this material. Now, if we don’t want open the technological floodgates to porn, we’re denounced as censors.

The claim of censorship, of course, is ridiculous. It’s not like Steve Jobs is dictating what you can and cannot buy. If you want pornography, you can buy another computer. In fact, you can simply access pornography on the iPad by using the computer’s internet browser. What Steve Jobs won’t do is sell pornographic-based applications on apple.com.

From a Catholic perspective, even a nudity-free version of Playboy would be morally objectionable because of its advocacy of sexual immorality and crude language. But this nudity-free iPad edition will bring about an interesting competition.

The nudity-free iPad version of Playboy will cost $4.95, the same price as the print version available on the newsstand. As Dylan Stableford of TheWrap.com says: “If you own an iPad and read Playboy for the articles, it’s your lucky day.”

This head-to-head competition will put to the test one of the least believable lies of the last century – Playboy’s claim, over objections to its pornographic content, that people “read it for the articles.” Something tells me that Playboy won’t find too many people willing to shell out $4.95 every month for just “articles.”

In a powerful 2006 letter entitled "Bought with a Price," Bishop Paul Loverde of Arlington, Va., referred to pornography as a “plague” and noted that this once ostracized endeavor has become too widely accepted today. He wrote:

This plague stalks the souls of men, women and children, ravages the bonds of marriage and victimizes the most innocent among us. It obscures and destroys people's ability to see one another as unique and beautiful expressions of God's creation, instead darkening their vision, causing them to view others as objects to be used and manipulated.

It has been excused as an outlet for free expression, supported as a business venture, and condoned as just another form of entertainment. It is not widely recognized as a threat to life and happiness. It is not often treated as a destructive addiction. It changes the way men and women treat one another in sometimes dramatic but often subtle ways. And it is not going away.

True: It isn’t going way. But at least it hasn’t established a beachhead on the iPad. And for that, I applaud Steve Jobs for being a good businessman.

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The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.