Apple’s prudishness towards nudity or even bikini’s in their apps doesn’t extent to nudity in art. A Polish developer has launched a series of puzzles based on nude art: Modigliani Nudes Puzzle, Bathing Nudes Paintings Puzzle, Fabulous Nude Paintings Puzzle and Classic Nude Paintings Puzzle. And Apple seem quite happy about that.
To some extant I can understand where Apple are coming from. The app bans, though rather prudish, seem to be an attempt to maintain a certain standard within the appstore. There are plenty of lads mags and Snoop Dogg videos with enough titillation to keep the average teenage boy happy. Apple are implying that that type of content is denigrating to the brand. Fair enough. But the problem is as soon as you start to act as censor, lines can become difficult to draw and you stand in danger of looking draconian or ridiculous. I’m sure these are issues that Google and other internet portals have had to consider. The underlying point is that Apple are (arguably) a distributor and not a publisher of the content. And as such, censorship is a difficult game to play.