Murderdome, a dark and violent comic strip noted for its excessive gore that has made its entire genre of fiction so popular, has been the first digital book to get the boot from Apple’s App store censors.
After word of the comics’ Tuesday night disappearance spread, publisher, Infurious Comics, had offered up the first episode for free along with a call for reader support on their blog.
“PLEASE leave a comment,” wrote the strip’s creator, Paul Jason Holden. “We’ll forward ALL of these to Apple, so that we can ensure that not only Murderdrome, but that ANY comic submitted to Apple doesn’t fall foul of the same censorship.”
In Murderdome’s defense, the post went on to cite several other, what appear to be equally violent media on the iTunes store including, South Park, Reservoir Dogs and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. By this morning the plea for help had grabbed the attention and support of numerous readers, all primarily critical of Apple’s censorship.
For all intents and purposes, Murderdome is not actually a book, but rather an application, called a comic reader of which Murderdome was the leading title. The app was rejected by Apple under violation of a paragraph in the SDK agreement saying, “Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”
The terms written in the SDK give Apple the freedom to not even have to play the role of a censor as the agreement is so cut and dry, yet they run the risk of upsetting current and future users. Instead of instituting such concrete rules, it would perhaps be in there best interest to purpose a rating system. This way users are warned of potentially offensive content, yet still have access to it if they wish to view it.
[via Fortune]
