More egg for Apple’s face: for 24 hours, a Spanish e-book edition of Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf appeared in the Apple Store—complete with swastika. Someone (Apple or the publisher) hastily pulled it down once bloggers called attention to it, but it is just another in a long line of strange decisions that are making people wonder just what Apple’s app store reviewers are doing over there.
The issue from my perspective is not whether an e-book of Mein Kampf should be allowed. In the United States, freedom of speech is an important part of our Constitution, even if it’s not speech we like—and more importantly, this book should be kept available as an example of true evil so we know what kinds of things to guard against. (In fact, you can find it in a number of places even now, including Project Gutenberg.)
In fact, the issue is that Apple serves as a gatekeeper for its store, filtering out controversial applications (such as an e-book reader that could download the Kama Sutra from Project Gutenberg). They certainly have the right to do so; it is their store, after all.
But if they are going to enforce standards of decency, they should at least enforce them consistently. Things like this keep on slipping by them. As TechCrunch put it, “If the Nazi logo didn’t raise a red flag, I’m not sure what will."
On the other hand, there are only 40 employees to review the thousands upon thousands of applications Apple receives. With so little manpower, perhaps the occasional lapse should not be surprising.
I agree, at least Apple had to good sense to yank this application when it was pointed out to them. Niggling and petty in some areas, they can’t argue for looseness in areas that matter more.
And I also agree that censorship isn’t the answer. That tends to create a mystique about a book that causes certain sorts of people to get curious: “They’re keeping it from me, so there must be some truth in it that they don’t want me to hear.” I saw that sort of attitude from Holocaust deniers on Seattle’s dreadful free-access cable channel. These people tend to be fools, but even fools can do a lot of harm.
But it is also true that when you sell a product, you incur a responsibility to tell people what it is. In general, books like Mein Kampf shouldn’t be banned, but they do need to come with clear warnings. Amazon has warnings on one of its Kindle editions of Mein Kampf in English but not the other.
It’s also true that similarly foul books need similar treatments. Mein Kampf bears some of the responsibility for roughly 20 million civilian deaths. Das Kapital bears a similar responsibility for the deaths of some 100 million people, five times as many. Any labeling and distribution rules apply to the former should certainly apply to the latter. The number of people who deny by their silence communism’s horrors is far greater and far more influential that the seedy little sorts who deny the Jewish genocide.
The NY Times, for instance, still refuses to return a Pulitzer won by reporting that included a denial of Stalin’s murder (by starvation and disease) of some 5 million Ukrainians in the early 1930s. The Soviets plied Walter Duranty, the paper’s once famous Moscow reporter, with booze and babes. Both he and the NY Times then compliantly said what they wanted said.
I read “Mein Kampf” as a teenager, the book is extremely revealing and anyone interested in the history of WWII should read it.
It is of course rubbish from beginning to end. Old (pre-WWI) German imperial aims, sloshed about with ridiculous anti-Semitic statements (made all the more ambiguous because in German then “Juden” also meant “commercial”) and the whole artificially wrapped up as some kind of personal revelation (which clearly it was not).
Its impact as a work of literature is zero, but as a historical document it does have importance. No-doubt neo-nazi’s will revere it, but hardly because of its largely incoherent and very dated content.
Making it available, even with the swastika, should not be a problem anywhere.
The “Karma Sutra of Vatsyayana” is a work of excellence and an important part of world literature, especially the beautiful simplicity of the Burton translation.
The problem is that Apple is selling a device, and just not some store deciding what they wish to market – a device is a means of reading itself, not a location, or repository of choice. In that Apple is running both it is more problematic, like Amazon’s Kindle.
Basically I don’t like the idea of some marketing manager deciding what I or my children will be allowed to read. Both Apple and Amazon should be legally separated from monopolising content through a reading device.
Over 100 new apps added per day, tack on the additional load of updates to scan. And only 40 people are doing this? Impossible. Yet the ambulance chasers still only get one or two things to complain about per month and some, like this, are not even valid complaints. It’s a book, it exists, and critical thinkers will go unharmed reading while the rest will be idiots with or without it involved.
Seriously. Slow news day?
“Mein Kampf bears some of the responsibility for roughly 20 million civilian deaths. Das Kapital bears a similar responsibility for the deaths of some 100 million people, five times as many.”
Mike you have clearly not read the latter work — the comparison is not sustainable.
Apple’s removal of this book from its store is a clear indicator that they are not a legitimate source for books or knowledge. The terrible book by Hitler is available at almost any decent bookstore in any city in the United States. It has long been accepted as an important piece of evidence in a horrific crime against humanity and as an important source of insight into the workings of a sick and evil mind.
Apple’s knee-jerk approach to banning content is making it look illiterate and unreliable.