I was just talking to my cousin about the article in the new issue of Rolling Stone about itunes banning and pulling all the white power/hate music from their site. While i'm certainly not a fan of that music I will say that if that isn't blatant censorship I don;t know what is. The SPLC said that contacted amazon and spotify but they didn't remove anything. My cousin agrees with itunes. What do you guys think? What ever happend to free speech? Like Carnivore said this is America, you got the right to hate who you want.
Free speech is great! But Apple is a business and iTunes is a medium for them to sell music. So its also their freedom to pick what they allow there. I also can see a giant media clusterfuck if they had gotten a whiff that this type of music was being sold by them.
They have been censoring all kinds of things for years. It's nothing new. I don't think this situation has anything to do with free speech though. Itunes is just a private business and a private store. That's it, nothing more. Getting something removed from itunes isn't stopping people from making it or selling it in any way. Hell those bands probably just got millions of people checking out their stuff who would have never done it otherwise.
I don't care about those bands but what if the church groups start getting black metal, which I love, pulled cause of those bands supporting satan or some shit. Itunes never cared in the past until the SPLC started pressuring them. Where does it stop?
It stops where ever itunes feels they will make the most money. It doesn't matter what the content is at all. They are just a business and will do whatever makes the most sense financially. Itunes is certainly not the end all be all of where and how to get music. And like I said before itunes has been doing this stuff for years. It's not new. It sounds like you think itunes is more then just a store. It really isn't. Getting upset about it is the same as getting upset that walmart stopped selling a certain brand of socks or that McDonald's stopped selling a certain kind of burger. They are just businesses moving products. You shouldn't be letting them dictate what you wear or eat or listen to in the first place.
Yeah, I don't really see it as censorship either... It's more like Apple is saying "we don't support this and don't believe we should distribute it." I wonder if they got rid of black power and anti-gay music too, though? Got to be somewhat consistent. And "hey Amazon didn't get rid of it!" is a terrible argument since they even refuse to stop selling NAMBLA books, sooooo...
freedom of speech only applies to the government not being able to censor its citizens. last time I checked, our oppressors & Apple were separate entities, so your first amendment rights are of no concern. this would fall under the clause of "their business, their rules" which applies to everything in life.
"Censorship" seems a bit of a strong word for something that's essentially a boycott. Since I'm pretty sure there are ways beyond iTunes to get your white power fix I guess Nazis won't care.
In an interesting twist, Banned in the USA by 2 Live Crew is available on iTunes. It kind of takes the wind out of the sail if indeed you can purchase the album in the USA. And yes, freedom of speech and your first amendment have absolutely nothing to do with iTunes. It's all about the mighty dollar. If there was a large enough audience and the money was there I suspect that iTunes would sell anything.
You (Brits) have only yourselves to blame for that (Bono) debacle. For once, we American' can't be blamed
^ Off-topic, but I still don't understand why everyone was upset that they were given a free album. Talk about first-world problems…
Don't buy music from iTunes. Support your favorite music in other ways. Buy the vinyl or hopefully the artist has their own webpage for downloads or use bandcamp, etc etc. If you have to have it and it's not on Soulseek rip old tunes from youtube via Audio Hijack.
Maybe off topic, but this is a silly topic anyway. This isn't censorship. Apples - oranges. U2 should have offered it free. Not dumped that shitty stuff upon people I'm right. The rest of you (who disagree with me) are wrong. Close this thread down and let's move on.
I won't even install QuickTime, let alone iTunes on anything I own. I got an iTunes gift card at work & donated it to charity, because poor people need iTunes gift cards ironically.
I don't think the problem was with being offered a free album, it was with it being installed on your iPhone without your agreement that was. For me, who rarely updates the music on my phone, it's to this day a pain in the butt to skip the tunes every time they come on. As for censorship... Well, this board has censored posts for rather more benign reasons than hate speech, right?
