Spiegel Online
German tabloid Bild is protesting Apple’s new “guidelines on erotic content,” calling them arbitrary censorship. The paper’s concerns revolve around their partially nude “Bild Girls,” which run daily in print and online, a feature not uncommon in some European papers. In Bild’s iPhone app, released last December, the reader is allowed to undress each model, down to a bikini, by shaking his phone. Bild is now calling on the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers to officially protest the policy, citing concerns with Apple’s recent crack-down on sexual content in the iTunes store.
As reported in Der Spiegel, Bild is not the only German publication to have run afoul of Apple’s policies. Weekly news magazine Stern had its iPhone app temporarily removed from the iTunes store in January following the publication of an erotic photo gallery. Bild digital media chief Donata Hopfen is calling on the publisher’s group to fight the policy, arguing “such policies represent a ‘curtailing of press freedoms’ for German and European media outlets. The Federation of German Newspaper Publishers, she writes in an e-mail, must take action ‘in the interest of freedom of the press.’ ‘Today it is naked breasts,’ she writes, ‘tomorrow it could be editorial content.’ ”
>German publisher in row with Apple over pin-ups in iPhone app (Guardian)
>It’s Time to Declare War Against Apple’s Censorship (Gizmodo)
