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Apple Censoring 'Jailbreak' in U.S. iTunes Store Listings [Update: Fixed]

BaldiMac said:
Or somebody was tasked with removing reviews that promoted piracy through jailbreaking and messed up. There are plenty of explanations that would fall under "inadvertent".

The idea that the purposely filtered song title containing the word "jailbreak" is silly.
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My point is that they did not inadvertently filter the word "jailbreak". They may or may not have applied the filter incorrectly to things beyond the intended scope of filtering (by including songs instead of just reviews, as you suggest), but the censoring of the word "jailbreak" was not inadvertent by any reasonable interpretation of the word.

Although I am not, or will ever be, someone who jailbreaks my iPhone, jailbreaking is not illegal in the US. A typo is inadvertent. But unless any low-level employee can easily or accidentally change how the iTunes store works on a whim, which I highly doubt, replacing the word "jailbreak" with asterisks was not inadvertent.
 
autrefois said:
My point is that they did not inadvertently filter the word "jailbreak". They may or may not have applied the filter incorrectly to things beyond the intended scope of filtering (by including songs instead of just reviews, as you suggest), but the censoring of the word "jailbreak" was not inadvertent by any reasonable interpretation of the word.

Although I am not, or will ever be, someone who jailbreaks my iPhone, jailbreaking is not illegal in the US. A typo is inadvertent. But unless any low-level employee can easily or accidentally change how the iTunes store works on a whim, which I highly doubt, replacing the word "jailbreak" with asterisks was not inadvertent.
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As described in the Update, the censoring described in the main post was likely inadvertent. I think you may be misinterpreting the Update. I suggested a reasonable explanation as to why they would be using the word "jailbreak" in their filtering system that didn't involve censoring based on the word itself.

My bet is the word "jailbreak" was accidentally added to the profanity filter instead of a "watch list" of terms that might need to be reviewed within the context of an app description or customer review. I wouldn't be surprised if other words were accidentally added as well, but no one cared.
 
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BaldiMac said:
Amazing that an apparent technical glitch/human error that lasted for a few hours has yielded 150 posts complaining about censorship and comparing Apple to Big Brother and Nazis.

Based on one single word being replaced by asterisks.
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Because this forum, like most internet forums, is full of knee-jerk m*r*ns who jump up and down whenever there is anything, at least here, that looks like it might be Anti-Apple.

Why would anyone want to hang around on an Apple related site just to slag them off at the drop of a hat, especially where this turns out to be almost a complete non-story, is beyond me. This thread is the PRIMO example of Godwin's Law. (If you don't know, Google)

I would hope that some of you might just look back at your ranting posts here, and reflect....

Nahh. not going to happen.:(
 
It seems a lot of commenters jumped the gun. I've been lurking for awhile, and it seems the MR community never misses an opportunity to bash Apple.
 
Well I think that Apple should ***** *** *** ***** **** *** ********
***** *** ******** **** ****** ******* ******* IMHO.
 
What? Don't you kids today know that jailbreak is a FOUL word? It implies that one is trying to get around the LAW. Originally (back in the day), this meant you wanted to get out of a real jail. Jailbait, similarly, meant you were trying to skirt age laws for permissible adult activities. Thus, Jailbreak is the digital age equivalent. It is a part of the first two Commandments of Jobs:

1> Thou Shalt Not Sell Software Without Giving Apple Its Tithe Of 1/3 Your Sale Price

2> Thou Shalt Not Release Any Software That Does Not Meet the Almighty Apple's Approval.

So the Almighty Jobs has spoken. He has been moved on beyond the Earthly realms, but his Word shall live forever (or until the REAL God decides to smite this sacrilege. ;)
 
Sky Blue said:
Wow. That's pretty ridiculous. Will they censor the word android next?
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Agreed.

If people know about Jailbreaking, Apple's quaint attempt will not only do nothing to resolve the problem (yo Apple, fix the bugs if jailbreaking bothers you so) and not letting customers think that "J*******K" might mean something like "JUSTA***K", or any other cute phrase that wouldn't be out of place in today's muzak-inspired so-called music...

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boomish said:
WTF is going with Apple, they turning into MS? this can't be for real...
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Power corrupts, probably... or else Apple has learned to think different... :(

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MagnusVonMagnum said:
What? Don't you kids today know that jailbreak is a FOUL word? It implies that one is trying to get around the LAW. Originally (back in the day), this meant you wanted to get out of a real jail. Jailbait, similarly, meant you were trying to skirt age laws for permissible adult activities. Thus, Jailbreak is the digital age equivalent. It is a part of the first two Commandments of Jobs:

1> Thou Shalt Not Sell Software Without Giving Apple Its Tithe Of 1/3 Your Sale Price

2> Thou Shalt Not Release Any Software That Does Not Meet the Almighty Apple's Approval.

So the Almighty Jobs has spoken. He has been moved on beyond the Earthly realms, but his Word shall live forever (or until the REAL God decides to smite this sacrilege. ;)
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OMG! :eek:

But I like your point 1> in particular... especially with all the cost savings for shrinkwrapped boxes, graphic design for the packaging, manuals, rebate forms, registration forms, disc manufacturing, etc, etc, one should see more of a cost savings than anything else... imagine if "the old normal" brick and mortar stores demanded 30% of every sale the software makers worked hard to earn while telling competitors they couldn't sell their software in the store... the FCC wouldn't be happy over that...
 
This is so ridiculous. :p
It's sort of believable because apple does seem to be getting more paranoid with it's iTunes presence. (remember that whole thing about apple not letting developers mention any other platform in their app descriptions?)
 
zorinlynx said:
Apple continues to do things that make me not like them.

How much more will they do before they finally break any remaining goodwill I have for them, making me not want to buy their products anymore?

There are limits to what one will tolerate to have shiny toys.
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Exactly. I don't really like apple anymore and haven't ever since snow leopard came out. After upgrading to snow leopard, I went back down to regular leopard due to the constant glitches of SL. I never even bothered with lion, already got an iphone i don't need the dang thing on my mac. Looking at mountain lion, there's absolutely nothing in it that I want or need. Anyone who stores data on a cloud is an idiot as the servers that your data is on can FAIL at ANY moment. Notes for mac?? Stupid stupid stupid. iMessages? Ever heard of instant message?

With that said, I just got a factory unlocked iphone 4 and I was using a 2g iphone prior to that and I had to jailbreak it in order to use it with tmobile. I didn't think I'd need to jailbreak it anymore considering it's factory unlocked, but I can't stand the 12 app per folder limitation, my iphone doesn't have facetime since it was made for the UAE so it looks like I'm going to jailbreak as soon as an untethered one comes out for 5.1.1

Good riddance apple. I'll buy all my apple things from ebay from now on, no more of my money will go to apple.

I would think that apple would WANT users to JAILBREAK their devices just so that they can viod the warrenties and then the user can go out and buy another device or just pay apple for the repair. Jailbreaking only affects the SOFTWARE anyway, not the hardware. Any SMART person knows that restoring it gets rid of it, just like reformatting a hard drive.
 
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Really Apple? I think you need to dig the hole a little deeper, before burying your head in it.

So if promise not to use the word, will you turn the other way when I do it? Then you'll inevitably catch me, tell me it's for my own good and that I'll appreciate it when I'm older. To which I'll yell back, "go JAILBREAK yourself" and run away from home with PC. I'll run lots of really bad programs, get caught for downloading a Metallica CD, and you'll bail me out and bring me home.
 
Xenc said:
The point is Apple shouldn't have been censoring the word in the first place. If they hadn't have tried to censor it, this mistake would never have happened.
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It's their store they can do what they like. There's no First Amendment etc prohibition against it. So 'shouldn't' doesn't really apply
 
charlituna said:
It's their store they can do what they like. There's no First Amendment etc prohibition against it. So 'shouldn't' doesn't really apply
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It certainly does apply. Shouldn't doesn't mean can't dude. The word shouldn't is always an opinion (e.g. "He shouldn't drink too much soda.")

Frankly, it's a very bad idea for Apple to be censoring words that aren't foul language. They are making themselves look like total scum bags when they do wholesale greed mongering to the point of blanket word censoring on things that aren't even related (e.g. songs).
 
American sites regularly over-sanitise "unwholesome" words.
Philip K Dick frequently comes up as D***.

But my all-time favourite was the site offering to sell "H*** Times by Charles D***ens".
 
justperry said:
Just my opinion, relax.

The thing is, the US regards itself as the most democratic country, sorry to awake you but it is not.
Freedom of speech also includes no censoring.
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"Sorry to awake you?" What are you, some sort of liberator? That's idiotic. Go gloat over your "freedom of speech" with your countrymen and stop trying to think you know whats best for an entire country.

Fools these days, I tell you...
 
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