Apple execs have a hard time telling the difference between porn and literature.
First Apple removed images from graphic novels of classics “Ulysses” and “The Importance of Being Earnest” for being, well, too graphic for the device that has been touted as “freedom from porn.”
Robert Berry, the illustrator of “Ulysses Seen,” told the New York Times that an image of a woman with exposed breasts was one of the offending panels in the comic version of the book.
Berry offered to pixelate the image or cover it up with a fig leaf, suggestions that were rejected by Apple. “We basically had to lose all of her body and just tighten in on her face,” Mr. Berry said. “It is rather disappointing.” (You can still read the original version online.)
Belgian artist Tom Bouden, who turned Wilde’s farce into an all-male one, found the panels of his iPad “Earnest” blotted with blackouts over the offending bits.
Then, according to blog the big money, Apple thought twice about it. They have now asked both devs to resubmit the original content.
In an email, Apple spokesperson Trudy Miller said: “We made a mistake. When the art panel edits of the “Ulysses Seen” app and the graphic novel adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “Importance of Being Earnest” app were brought to our attention, we offered the developers the opportunity to resubmit their original drawings and update their apps.”
We’ll keep you posted on whether the apps get reinstated and in what form.
But the episode does seem to place those prankster ad-busting porn protests we’ve written about recently in a new light.
