After Apple banned thousands of iPhone applications containing sexual material, German publishers fear the company will start limiting their editorial freedoms.

It's been an institution for decades: Almost daily Germany's Bild
newspaper presents a naked woman on its front page. Sex sells for
Germany's best-selling tabloid and needless to say "Bild-Girls," as they
are known, are a main attraction of the paper's new iPhone application.

Users can shake their iPhone to slowly undress the models. However,
the virtual Bild-Girls are much more modest than their paper
counterparts; a slinky bikini is the most viewers will ever see in the
virtual version of Bild.

One could call this self-censorship. The taming of the Bild-Girls
comes at a time when Apple has banned thousands of iPhone applications
that feature sexually suggestive material.

In Germany, Apple's
"no-nipples"-policy has triggered a debate that goes much further than
whether it is tasteless to undress a virtual model or not.

German publishers are up in arms over the California company's
censorship policies. The question at stake is whether a provider of
technical infrastructure should be allowed to interfere with the content
offered via its platform.

Apple says it reacts to complaints

"Today it may just be the rejection of too much nudity," said
Wolfgang Fuerstner, director of the Organization of German Magazine
Publishers. "But in the future this could go much further to where Apple
simply blocks all content they don't like."

Apple has justified its actions and stated that the company has
reacted to complaints from app store users.

"It
came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women
who found the content getting too degrading, as well as parents who were
upset with what their kids were able to see," Philip W. Schiller, head
of worldwide product marketing at Apple told the New York Times.

Playboy and Sports Illustrated not affected

According to analyst Gene Munster at Piper Jaffray "Apple has a brand
to maintain."

"The bottom line is they want that image to be squeaky clean," he
told the New York Times in an interview.

Munster estimated that about 5 percent of the over 140,000 apps in
the App Store are sex related.

But even after Apple's ban, iPhone and iPod Touch are not 100 percent
family friendly. Through the pre-installed Safari browser, users –
including kids - can easily access the internet and the millions of
websites that contain pornography and violence.

And while banning thousands of less prominent applications that
contain nudity, the apps of Playboy and Sports Illustrated are still
online. It is this alleged arbitrary way of deciding, which worries
German publishers. They now want to push Apple to implement more
transparent rules.

For Wolfgang Fuerstner Apple's reaction will determine to what extent
Germany's news media will work together with the Californian company.

"I cannot think of anyone who will accept Apple setting the
conditions for editorial freedom," he told Deutsche Welle. "No one will
sell the right of freedom of the press to a company."

Courtesy Deutsche Welle