It's About Intent

I am finding that MG Seigler's posts are more often that not, poorly thought out, actually, the whole blogosphere as a whole as of late seems to have lost their collective sense.

That aside, let me proceed to explain to all of you why even though you can access porn any time your heart desires through Safari, Apple is not being hypocritical in any form or fashion.

Why?

Because the intent of Apple providing Safari is not to exclusively let you browse sexy/nude pictures of women/men. The overall intent is to allow people such as you, and me, on their platform, to browse the web as a whole, knowing full well that, yes, people might go and look up some porn.

Now, let us look at the intent of the developers providing nude and sexy applications on the iPhone platform. Their intent is to make a quick buck off of partially clothed/nude naked women or men. Whether this is morally wrong or not is moot in this case, it is simply a fact that this is the sole purpose of these type of applications, unlike Safari.

ONCE AGAIN, Safari is not there, nor advertised, to exclusively access porn. That is not the intent of Apple providing a browser on their platform. Unlike the various applications that were banned from the app store.

Here, I'll even provide a bit more evidence that it's all about intent that makes the difference.

Remember when everyone was up in arms that the infamous Pirate Bay was going to be shut down? I do, and do you also remember when people went nuts over the fact that Google could also be turned into a torrent search engine?

I remember that as well.

And do you remember when people were wondering why Google wasn't getting in trouble?

Bet you remember that too! Maybe intent has something to do with it.

Here's the thing, the Pirate Bay was all about encouraging piracy, hell, they had a page dedicated to lawsuits they received and published the insulting responses. Google, on the other hand, never once encouraged, much less promoted lawsuits and piracy on the front page and encourage users to download illegal content. Sure, Google is aware that searchers do occasionally search for content that is from illegal sources, but Google's intent with search is not to provide illegal torrents, but to organize the web, which yes, can be used inappropriately. Just like *gasp* Safari.

So, get off your high horses about Safari letting you access porn but the App Store will not, just because Apple has an app that lets you access porn, doesn't make them hypocritical.