The IT Nerd

You have wonder who died and appointed Apple the rulers of the universe. I say that because the news is out that Apple is apparently deleting any e-mail in any iCloud account that has the phrase “Barely legal teens.” No warning. No stuffing in your junk mail folder. Nothing. Here’s how this was discovered:

A screenwriter was delivering a PDF attachment of a draft of his script to the project’s director, by emailing it from his iCloud/MobileMe account to Gmail. The problem? The script would never arrive, no matter how many times he would send it. But sending other PDF documents worked fine.

I figured, wow — is this some sort of spectacular failure of our screenwriting software (Movie Magic Screenwriter)? Our software had generated the PDF, so maybe we had accidentally generated information that was somehow matching the profile of a virus, or malware, causing the document to be rejected by Apple’s mail servers.

After obtaining a copy of the PDF (sent via Gmail to our Microsoft Exchange server), we confirmed the exact same behavior when we tried to send it to our own iCloud mailbox. The email never arrived, nor did we receive any return notification.

So there was more experimentation, and they found this:

AND THEN I SAW IT — a line in the script, describing a character viewing an advertisement for a pornographic site on his computer screen. Upon modifying this line, the entire document was delivered with no problem.

The line in the script? “Barely Legal Teens” was the term. This was confirmed by additional testing by InfoWorld.

Clearly Apple is scanning your documents on iCloud email and if it doesn’t like the content, it zaps it. Now I’ve written about Apple’s hate of porn before, but this is just obscene that they do this. Now this paragraph their terms of service implies that they can do this:

You acknowledge that Apple is not responsible or liable in any way for any Content provided by others and has no duty to pre-screen such Content. However, Apple reserves the right at all times to determine whether Content is appropriate and in compliance with this Agreement, and may pre-screen, move, refuse, modify and/or remove Content at any time, without prior notice and in its sole discretion, if such Content is found to be in violation of this Agreement or is otherwise objectionable.

Charming. Now the author of the InfoWorld story that I am asked Apple for a comment, but didn’t get one back and he doesn’t expect to. After all, Apple doesn’t like to comment on stuff like that because they don’t have the balls that’s just how they are. Too bad. I would love for them to explain why they’re doing this and why they think they have the right to do so.

The new Macbooks that were announced yesterday have one serious omission. No firewire ports. I have commented on this myself, and apparently so have others. But apparently if you go to Apple’s discussion boards, any discussion of the lack of firewire in the Macbooks is being deleted. I’ve heard of reports of ths for years now. In fact if you check here, here, and here, you’ll see some examples of this. And to be honest, since it’s their board, they can do whatever they want. However, the optics of this just suck as they’re clearly doing more than keeping the discussions on topic and eliminating things like swearing and other types of bad behavior. It honestly looks like Apple is trying to create an aura where the only voices that you hear are the rabid base of fanbois that love anything that Apple does.

In my mind, this is bordering on censorship and I find it distasteful. But perhaps I’m over reacting here. What do you think? Post a comment and share your thoughts.

Oh by the way, If you really need to have firewire on your Macbook, the white Macbook is still available and it comes with firewire. So that’s an option. Or you can buy yourself a MacBook Pro, which is something that would make Apple really happy.