This exposes an interesting side-effect to previewing all apps released on their devices — they don’t have a plausible denial option. If pirated videos show up on YouTube, they can say, “well, we don’t preview everything that goes up” and simply take them down on request. Apple MUST take some level of responsibility for EVERY app on their store, which is an additional cost that must be accounted for.

Personally, I think they should add a “download at your own risk” section of their app store, keep only .15 on the dollar, and let any app on there someone wants to post. That would not only expand their bottom line, but allow a much wider range of options for the user with almost zero added risk.

I have ‘defended’ Apple’s business model here before, but it should be known I am about as libertarian in my views as one can get. I am forced under threat of fine, imprisonment or both if I don’t follow the order of government, whose top-down structure can (literally) be deadly. But in the private sector, I’m pretty much with Adam on it. If a company wants to strangle themselves, so be it. But it’s hard to argue with success

Pics or it didn’t happen.

Tim was more on point in responding to my critique when he noted that:

>>As best I understand it, your objection seems to be to my use of terms like “central planning” and “censorship” to describe the actions of a private company. <<

That's generally my point — especially when Tim starts dropping TSA and FDA in the same breath as private companies. My argument with Tim is on the use of language and the importance of certain terminology in political debates. Because there absolutely is a reason that people like Lessig, Zittrain, and Wu and organizations like Public Knowledge and Free Press use terms like this in their work and pleadings. They are out to use such language to invert the Big Brother problem and pretend that the primary problem with which public policy should be concerned is the supposed "central planning" and "censorship" by industry… which they would remedy with actual (and inescapable) central planning and / or censorship. I know you and Tim understand and share my opposition to such notions, but my beef with Tim here is that his use of language plays right into their hands. I understand that Tim will never accept that, but I will keep hammering him on this point because I think he is just dead wrong. Simply stated: Words matter.

More generally, Tim makes value judgments about large, hierarchical organizations that I am far more agnostic about. Of course it is true that large corporate bureaucracies with "top-down" management styles can do some truly stupid and inefficient things at times. But they can occasionally do some amazing things as well. Tim and I used to fight about this at the TLF when he complained about how much money and how many people it took to create the latest version of Windows. Just because it took a lot of resources to create a product, and just because the process behind it was highly "centralized," that's not necessarily a sign a failure in my book. Moreover, there is a WORLD of difference between that sort of experimental, evolutionary "central planning" and the state-based variant (in which failure takes longer to rectify / reverse).

So, my panties remain bunched!

Tim’s point is that closed systems won’t be as good, like government agencies aren’t as good. (Like the FCC, too, right, Tim?)

Your objection seems to be to the inference *you* draw—that Apple should do something different. It’s not necessary to draw that inference from what Tim says. Why not draw the inferences “Apple will not get my business” or “Apple will not succeed in the marketplace over time”?

Argue with Tim, if you want, but try to argue with what he says rather than what you imagine he thinks. It’ll be more productive—and require fewer changes of your underthings!

Anyway, you’re right that we’ve gone round this particular argument a few times. As best I understand it, your objection seems to be to my use of terms like “central planning” and “censorship” to describe the actions of a private company. I happen to think that libertarian insights about these concepts can be usefully applied to all large, hierarchical organizations. In fact, it’s precisely because I’m a libertarian that I find these concepts so useful. But I can see the point that applying them more broadly robs them of some of their pejorative quality.

If so, I would like to make a request for you to start running hard-core porn on your site right now, or else you are just a central-planning tyrant!

Seriously, why shouldn’t Apple set some general “community standards” for their patch of the woods? What is so wrong with that? Moreover, you still have web browser… use it to go wherever you want.

You just not taking into account the other values at play here, Tim. Of course, we’ve been through all this before… http://techliberation.com/2010/02/20/apples-app-store-porn-censorship

In fact, my guess is that Apple spends vastly more resources on the approval process than it does to host a given app in the store.