ComiXology CEO David Steinberger issues a clarification to yesterday's comic book industry controversy, but I don't see Apple as off the hook:
In the last 24 hours there has been a lot of chatter about Apple banning Saga #12 from our Comics App on the Apple App Store due to depictions of gay sex. This is simply not true, and we’d like to clarify.
As a partner of Apple, we have an obligation to respect its policies for apps and the books offered in apps. Based on our understanding of those policies, we believed that Saga #12 could not be made available in our app, and so we did not release it today.
Counter to what John Gruber implies, that ComiXology is entirely at fault here is a grossly reductive way to look at this. Had ComiXology published this comic in their iOS app, and had Apple received a volume of content-based complaints, Apple could have pulled the entire app from the App Store, including in-app purchase ability for those still with it downloaded. I'm surprised that someone like John would gloss over this or forget it was possible, and indeed, has happened.
I need more time to put together citations for a followup to properly annotate, so do check back on this story soon.
I don't want to put words in Steinberger's mouth, but objectively, the above statement means that ComiXology was concerned about Apple receiving complaints objecting to the content. They were worried about Apple's response to the mom/dad who finds "disgusting, pornographic comic book smut" on their child's iPad or iPhone. That's what Gruber and others are ignoring: ComiXology is at the mercy of Apple not choosing to flip the off switch, should they cross a notoriously nebulous line drawn by their terms of sale.
It would be a great deal bigger problem for ComiXology to lose all in-app purchase, because they have much more at stake than just one comic or even one publisher. They have to preserve the storefront for their multiple publishers and all of their customers. Look at the recent Marvel #1 server crash that took down everything across the board. The service being unavailable because of one incident raises the ire of the customer base and all the other publishers affected by their comics not being for sale.
ComiXology should have clarified things sooner, but at the same time, they can't exactly say "we're afraid Apple could nuke our entire store from orbit if they have a Concerned Parents Group light them up over explicit imagery", can they? If Apple privately raised serious concerns over content in some of the past issues of Saga, do you think ComiXology would be able to comment on that publicly without violating Apple's well-known gag order?
All of this is a consequence of the vice-grip Apple is forced to have as the arbiter of content across the media diaspora into which iOS has mutated. They've historically responded with the "shut down the 3rd party vendor first, ask questions later" approach previously. The case of that Chinese iPhone sweat shop game Phone Story is one thing, where the game misappropriated copyrighted imagery, like the Apple logo; however, Apple's swift action was, to be quite clear, more related to suppressing the message of the game. They didn't want front-page stories about the game, which protests and exposes the human cost of the supply chain for the very phones upon which the game was being played. Again, I'll be back later with more citations.
Further, from Steinberger:
Given this, it should be clear that Apple did not reject Saga #12.
After hearing from Apple this morning, we can say that our interpretation of its policies was mistaken. You’ll be glad to know that Saga #12 will be available on our App Store app soon.
We apologize to Saga creator Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples and Image Comics for any confusion this may have caused.
The only party not at fault whatsoever here is Image Comics, including their creators, who spoke out with incomplete information. Scapegoating ComiXology is precisely what Apple would prefer everyone do, instead of question why the top non-game app in the iOS App Store is so paranoid about their distributor (Apple) objecting to the 3rd-party content that they serve. ComiXology did have an apology to make, but understand that a hefty chunk of the reason for it (if not all of it) is on Apple's head. Yes, ComiXology should have gotten clarification out sooner; however, Apple's agreements are structured so that even though they wield all of the power in this relationship, they can peg culpability on the content providers who are making their platform successful. That's almost Lex Luthor-level genius.
Full disclosure: I've had two of the three ComiXology co-founders on my interview show Giant Size. I like their product and use it.
Style guide note: I had been using quotation marks to denote titles in headlines, but I hate the way it looks more than I hate the Paleolithic Internet choice of going all-caps.
I felt the need to append this thing before I got the additional Apple-blocking-content citations done. I've already gotten a nice pile of responses, many borne out of soreness from seeing ComiXology as some sort of Bond villain petting a cat and saying "yesss, everything went according to plan" and laughing maniacally at their success in manipulating creators and the audience.
Let's apply some deductive reasoning to the relatively certain facts that we know to work out the most likely scenarios.
Taking as given that today's statement from David Steinberger is factually correct, as no one seems to be disputing it, one may assume the following general timeline:
1). ComiXology informs Image Comics that Saga #12 would (or possibly did) give them "trouble" with Apple.
2). Image communicates to co-creator Brian K Vaughn that Saga #12 would not be available through the ComiXology app due to explicit sexual content found in the first two panels of the comic. At this point, a game of "telephone" begins, either with Vaughn mishearing, misunderstanding, speculating, or having it miscommunicated that the situation arose due to the homosexual nature of the depicted acts. Out of completely understandable outrage, he goes nuclear over social media. His co-creator Fiona Staples joins him in anger.
3). The rest of the comics social media world lights a match and throws more outrage fuel on the fire. Image re-tweets the rightfully angry tweets of Vaughn, Staples, and many other comics industry professionals who are operating on the understanding that Apple "rejected" or "banned" the issue in question. Contrary to what some people are saying, ComiXology did not re-tweet any of these folks. The audience later would speak out that they allowed their silence to speak for them.
4). ComiXology endorses and supports those calling for people to boycott the issue in iBooks by buying it on the ComiXology website and then syncing it to their devices.
5). Everyone goes to sleep and wakes up to ComiXology CEO David Steinberger posting an apology that is linked and mostly reprinted above. What seems like everyone refocuses their anger from Apple to ComiXology, both creators and audience. The general consensus becomes that ComiXology willfully mislead both Image and Vaughn, and consequently, the audience and the rest of the comics industry.
Questions remain. Prior to event 1 above, it's been speculated that, alternately, ComiXology, Image, and even Brian Vaughn himself hatched a sinister plot to defraud the audience by artificially manipulating the publicity for Saga #12 by manufacturing a controversy.
To assert such a thing of Image or Vaughn is ridiculous in the extreme, since this has been one of the most-anticipated comics of the first half of the year, and it's already a sales leader. There is no convincing evidence to support Image Comics knowing anything different than what they were told by ComiXology. The same goes for Vaughn and Staples. To say that ComiXology willingly mislead Image and Vaughn is a more reasonable assumption, if you take for granted that this was part of a larger plan on their part to demonize Apple.
The great unanswered question is what was or was not discussed between ComiXology and Apple prior to this morning's post by Steinberger. Where this piece by David Brothers loses me is in its steadfast assumption that ComiXology chose not to submit the issue without having any communication with Apple about it whatsoever. Brothers is a very smart comics commentator that a friend introduced me to during the "M-word" thing last week. I like his writing, but I think he's shy of half-cocked here. Regardless, I'm glad that he's encouraging dialogue. People should be talking about who minds the gate for their content of choice.
Make no mistake, Comixology's extremely high-profile status as the top-grossing non-game app in iOS means that Apple pays a great deal of attention to them. This is something I consider a given.
Mark Waid sees this whole thing in the same general light that I do, and I'm sure people will continue to misunderstand his perspective and mine. Waid specifically relates the clause in the Apple terms that forms the foundation of my argument:
Following my urge to continue ignoring my deadlines, I re-read the Terms of Service that I’d signed between Thrillbent and Comixology, paying particular attention to the age-rating guidelines. Hey, look. There, under the qualifiers defining what material cannot be published through apps but only through the web, is this one: “Explicit pornographic depiction of sexual activity or genitalia.” Okay, call me an old biddy, but I could make a reasonable case that an illustration of gang-bang bukkake could be interpreted as “explicitly pornographic.” And it occurred to me that maybe this was more the issue than homosexuality.
What if it were really the case that ComiXology and Image got away with the earlier issues of Saga before it achieved the post-first-TPB mainstream penetration, and Apple got touchy afterward? Hence, ComiXology "didn't submit" Sex #1, when in reality Apple told them "look, we let you slide on Saga because we weren't paying much attention to it. Not again. I mean, the book is called Sex for crying out loud. You know we can shut you down across the board."
ComiXology couldn't exactly make press statements or comment publicly about private conversations with Apple, not just because a significant portion of their business relies on that relationship, but because doing so is actually forbidden in those same Terms of Service. They are so onerous that Mark Waid technically violated them by publishing that very brief piece of the explicit content clause. Apple has written anti-competitive practices into those terms by making it a violation for vendors other than Apple to sell content that they themselves sell in iBooks.
Apple's conditional "moral obligation", as Steve Jobs put it, is either outright monopolistic or lazy, and neither reason is acceptable to a society predicated on the freedom of expression. Apple has censored gay explicit content before, so Vaughn's assumption was not pulled from thin air. The track record makes Comixology's theoretical fear of being shut out of Apple's walled garden very, very plausible and rational.
David Brothers and others have made a big deal out of ComiXology dodging paying Apple the standard 30% cut on this, one of the biggest top-grossing comics out right now. This is fallacious reasoning, unless you also take as given that ComiXology is full of and run by people who know nothing about business. To jeopardize their relationship with their customers in the long term over the short-term profits for a single issue is a waste of digital ink. It does make sense that ComiXology needed to demonstrate the power of the audience in the event that Apple went nuclear on them.
If we logically follow the reasoning of ComiXology choosing to expend their brand capital to preserve their entire business model on iOS, their actions make more sense. The manipulation that many assume on ComiXology's part (myself included) creates a great deal of distrust. I hate making a Dark Knight reference, but it is apt in that like the people of Gotham, the audience sees ComiXology as having "killed Harvey Dent".
Were ComiXology to have published Saga #12, the same outright banning and blocking of the app could very well have occurred, just as it did in the above-linked cases from 2010 and earlier. This is especially true if Apple warned them against violating those terms in this instance, which we cannot assume as a fact, however likely it may seem to some, myself included. To assert that Apple does not enforce that specific clause would be to ignore mountains of empirical evidence to the contrary.
Combine that with Comixology's high profile on iOS, and the calculated risk of your entire store being wiped off iOS for an undetermined amount of time is far too great a danger to run toward headlong. In that scenario, Apple is entirely in control of changing the precedent to their satisfaction before re-admitting ComiXology to the App Store, regardless of what the fan outcry may have been. The way they skirt anti-competition is by effectively saying that the explicit content is too easy for minors to access due to the ultra-vague factor that is "interface design". Neither can anyone exactly copy Apple's design elements, nor can they come up with one of their own that approaches the Apple ideal of perfection. It's a Catch-22.
ComiXology cannot escape the stink of having mislead their audience and some of the most-respected creators in the industry. The question then becomes how else they would be able to engage this cross-section of the audience and industry as topically in another way.
People hate being lied to and manipulated. They don't like to see their treasured creators dragged along unawares. Business is not a clean, black and white thing, and to assign all culpability to ComiXology is no more clean and perfect than assigning it all to Apple.