Sunday, May 20, 2012

Apple un-censors "Jailbreak"

For a time, Apple banned used of the word "jailbreak" from its app store and music library. I suppose it was trying to weed out apps for compromising the security of its phones and its music service, iTunes, since that's what "jailbreak" refers to in a certain community. Of course it is ordinary (if colloquial) English in other contexts to -- for example the name of an album by Thin Lizzy, and the name of an episode of the Roy Rogers show which I probably watched when I was 9 years old. The album and the Roy Rogers episode were not banned, only their name, so for a time you could find them, in the Apple store, but only under the name "J*******k."


Monopolies are always bad, and information monopolies are especially dangerous.

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