China leaves Apple books, movies on the cutting room floor

Apple has reportedly been banned from offering movies and books through its iTunes and iBooks portals in China. The New York Times cited anonymous sources in reporting that Beijing has decided that the Cupertino giant will no longer be able to offer the movie and book download services on the mainland. The reason for the …

[Mark 85]

Could this be a pre-emptive strike by China? Foxconn is building (or at least looking into) new plants in the sub-continent and a few other places with cheaper labor. This might just be a backdoor move by the government to pressure Apple to pressure Foxconn to stay.

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably an internal political thing

Perhaps it is a warning like you say. Something to tell them that if they make any moves towards relocating manufacturing out of China, they will find themselves shut out of the market. Since Foxconn is a Taiwanese company, China doesn't have direct control over them, so applying pressure on their customers is probably the best way to control them. But I doubt it.

This book/movie ban is symbolic, Apple's book/movie revenue in China is a rounding error on a rounding error, so it doesn't actually hurt Apple, it just makes headlines. There are so many other things they could have done if they actually wanted to make a real impact.

Rather than a warning shot, it might be a situation where they had to do "something" against Apple since they'd named them among the eight. So they chose something that wouldn't really hurt Apple and cause them to react, but would still make headlines that they're "getting tough" on US companies. Just like US politicians like to talk tough or take symbolic actions to shore up their political base or bring attention to themselves, a similar dynamic probably exists in China.

[Howard Hanek]

Oh My!

So no transgender superheroes for the Chinese? No series about murderous American Presidents throwing beautiful reporters onto the subway tracks? No incestuous brother sister fantasy epics?

HOW will they survive?

[GrumpyOldBloke]

Re: Oh My!

Disposing of reporters wouldn't be a problem. Brother sister fantasy epics might be a bit difficult in a country just coming out of the one child policy. The infantile super hero genre has been very effective in conditioning American's to wait for heroes / authorities so that is translatable. Must be something else.

[x 7]

first stage of a new era of censorship

the Chinese authorities have realised its too easy to obtain western decadent material, this is the first stage in a crackdown on "free" sources of literature (free as in freedom, not as in beer)

[hutcheson]

Encryption-related?

iCloud is allowed. iTunes, not so much.

iCloud backups can be encrypted by Apple upon demand-backed-by-force-majeur. iTunes backups can't.

Coincidence?

[Sebby]

Re: Encryption-related?

Nah. In fact, iTunes would now be the only way to get movies/books onto the devices, and encrypted local backups don't go anywhere even with the user's key in hand.

Hmm. Now there's a thought. If only people could download books/movies from elsewhere on iOS without needing iTunes. They can't only because of silly Apple's no-compete restrictions. Heh, own goal.

[KroSha]

Re: Encryption-related?

Wow, I didn't realise that you HAD to use iTunes! I wonder how I manage to load everything into Marvin and VLC on my iPad?

[raving angry loony]

Theory vs practice

In theory, various nations are champions of democracy, free speech, honest trade, and encourage others to improve simply by not dealing with them, and forbidding any corporation based in their country from dealing with them.

In practice, all the nations that claim they are champions of democracy, free speech, honest trade et. al. are little more than utter hypocrites, happily doing business with the most repressive dictatorship if there's money to be made, and hang all those silly principles.

We seem to have two groups of nations left on the planet. Those run by those who worship money, and those run by those who worship themselves. And money.

Pity.

[dbayly]

Books, Movies but NOT music?

Perhaps music isn't as subversive :-)

[x 7]

Re: Books, Movies but NOT music?

in China, music needs tambourines to be subversive