Wis[s]e Words

I see what you did there

Published on April 16, 2013Leave a comment

From an otherwise slightly rambling Adam Roberts Guardian article about the two souls of science fiction:

o say that SF has more imaginative and discursive wiggle-room than “realist” art is, while true, also to say that SF has the potential to be a more heterogeneous and inclusive conceptual space. This is something that’s understood by the genre’s greatest writers: Ursula K Le Guin, Octavia Butler, James Tiptree Jr, Margaret Atwood, Karen Joy Fowler, Pat Cadigan, Justina Robson.

Not actually that bad a list of writers to get your teeth in, to be honest…

Now Apple censors French comics

Published on April 15, 2013Leave a comment

So yeah, remember what I said yesterday? Well, today Apple proved me right:

Izneo, the France digital comics publisher/distributor that represents comic book work from the ten largest comic book publisher in France has found itself forced to pull 1500 of the 4000 titles it currently distributes, after demands from Apple.

So the publisher removed all comics “revealing a breast, causing cleavage, curve, or evoking a suggestive gesture”; as Wim Lockefeer commented, “it’s one more example of an American company imposing its own mores on the rest of the world”. These are not decisions Apple should make in the first place, but the shoddy way in which they are made and enforced is what really grates.

Kiwi music

Published on April 15, 2013Leave a comment

We’re Still Torturing Prisoners At Guantanamo

Published on April 15, 2013Leave a comment

Prisoners on hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay (and wasn’t that supposed to have been clsoed during Obama’s first term) are being tortured through force feeding:

I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.

I know something about what having a feeding tube put into you can feel like, even in the best of circumstances, because Sandra had to had one a couple of times during her long illnesses. She hated those things, had had bad experiences with them before to the point of suffering panic attacks just by the thought she had to have one again. Don’t forget that these are tubes that have to be shoved down your nose, through your throat into your stomach, then have to be kept in there for as long as you need feeding that way. Even when you undergo it voluntarily, knowing why you need it, it’s uncomfortable and painful at best. When it’s done involuntarily, against your wishes? That’s torture.

(Title and story from Unfogged.)

The sorry Saga #12 saga

Published on April 14, 2013Leave a comment

Controversial panel from Saga #12

So, to recap, the latest issue of Brian Vaughan’s and Fiona Staples’ Saga comic felt foul of Apple censorship over the panel to left amongst others, and it couldn’t be sold through the Comixology Apple App. On hearing this, Vaughan and Staples went on a PR campaign to protest this decision, only for Comixology, their distributor, to come back a day later and say it was all a misunderstanding and Apple never had even seen the issue and it had been their own decision not to publish it through the Apple app.

A happy ending? Not really, as apart from that whole being lied to by Comixology about who took the decision to censor what, there’s still the reality of the threat of Apple censorship and the influence it already has on how companies like Comixology behave. It was their ideas about what Apple would and would not allow to be published on iOS that led them to pull Saga 12 and this might not have been the first time they did it. It’s not just a problem with comics either of course; everybody who has to deal with Apple as gatekeeper to publish on the iOS platform will have to self censor to a greater or lesser intent to deal with their guidelines, which can also be a bit vague.

It’s not just Apple either. We’re entering an era in which, as everything migrates online while the devices that we go online with become increasingly less open, there are now several powerful gatekeepers emerging that can strangle freedom of speech. Apple, Google, Amazon, all have the potential to do this, or are already acting as a censor to some extent. This is not necessarily done maliciously, but in any situation where there’s only one party that can give you access to a certain platform, there will be censorship emerging naturally from ordinary business considerations. When we were all using desktop pcs this wasn’t that big a problem, as there never was this central gatekeeper and you as a user could decide for yourself what to and what not to install. With publication on an iOS platform only possible through the Apple store, this is no longer possible and anything Apple deems unsavoury or against their own interests will therefore be rejected.

The only real solution to this problem therefore consists of the opening up of all such walled gardens, to allow rival shops on iOS, Android, Kindle, etc, rather than allow a monosophy of gatekeepers to persist.