Well, we’ve all been wondering which would be the next company to withdraw support for Wikileaks and now we know that it’s Apple. An unofficial Wikileaks app that allows you to read content from the website on your iPhone or iPad has been pulled from the app store, as reported by TechCrunch.
The app, which is described as “The Wikileaks app gives instant access to the world’s most documented leakage of top secret memos and other confidential government documents.” was written by developer Igor Barinov.
The app cost $1.99 which technically means it was selling access to leaked documents, even through the documents themselves were free. It could be then that Apple felt the app breached its terms and conditions. It could be argued though that if this was the case and a third-party was trying to benefit financially from selling content that is made freely available by another provider, that the app should not have been approved in the first place unless it too was free.
Apple join an ever-growing list of companies which have withdrawn services from Wikileaks including Bank of America, MasterCard, Visa, Paypal and Amazon.
There will no doubt be more companies withdrawing services from Wikileaks, though this number is bound to drop off now as new stories move on and people slowly forget about the Wikileaks scandal of recent weeks.
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Not really a surprise – one more corporate giant covering their back. Though it will achieve very little I imagine – proscription rarely achieves anything other than removing any control over a perceived threat, whether the threat is alcohol, drugs or information.
Does the store sell apps to read the NY Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, etc? If so have they removed them too? No, I thought not. Hypocrites.
Land of Free’s censorship
From a legal perspective, this is a very interesting case and I’m excited to see how it plays out in the courtroom. For one, will England extradite Assange? That’s the first step.