German Tabloid Rips Apple Strip Censorship

A German tabloid is screaming censorship over Apple's new application decency standards, which are inhibiting a newspaper promotion that allows readers to "strip" a photo of a daily model by shaking their iPhones. Bild managers have already bowed to Apple restrictions by leaving the models in bikinis after the striptease, and are infuriated because they believe even that won't be enough to satisfy Apple app censors. Apple's "guidelines on erotic content" are nothing more than "curtailing press freedoms," fumed exec Donata Hopfen.

"Today it is naked breasts, tomorrow it could be editorial content," added Hopfen, who hopes to organize German publishers to protest the restrictions. The "Shake the Bild Girl" feature was launched in December and has already been downloaded 100,000 times. The Bild complaint is the first major salvo against the Apple crackdown from across the Atlantic, where Europeans find American decency standards "rather prudish," notes Der Spiegel.
(More Apple stories.)