Month: April 2013

Apple is proving once again that app developers and content creators are playing ball in its court. Today, news came out that the Cuptertino-based company has banned issue 12 of the comic, Saga, from the ComiXology app. This isn’t the first time that Apple has banned or censored content from its stores. The Kama Sutra, Ulysses, Moby Dick, and other books have been censored for having sexually explicit language or content. Apple also caved to pressure from the Chinese government and banned the app “jingdian shucheng,” which gave access to 10 books written by the political writer, Wang Lixiong. Lixiong has been a influential critic of Chinese policy in Tibet.

The creator of Saga, Brian K. Vaughan (also known for Ex Machina), announced on Image Comic’s Tumblr page that Saga #12 will not be sold on ComiXology for iOS “because of two postage stamp-sized images of gay sex.”

Vaughan is pragmatic in his post and offers alternatives for fans to download the comic. He instructed fans to buy a physical copy from a store, download it directly from Image Comic’s website, or purchase it from an Android device that has ComiXology on it. As a last note, Vaughan points out that readers may be able to find Saga #12 in Apple’s own iBookstore, which, ironically, faces less censorship.

Other writers have quickly jumped to Vaughan’s defense and are voicing their opinions about Apple’s policies. Joe Hill, creator of Locke and Key, had this to say:

This is shitty and wrong and Apple’s AppStore needs to get out of the censorship business. I don’t need help figuring out what is and isn’t appropriate for me to read; I’m capable of doing that myself. Thanks, though.

William Gibson, known for his cyberpunk science fiction novels like Neuromancer, also came out against Apple:

Apple in homophobic adult comic-banning embarrassment. What a sad place for such a supposedly smart firm to find itself, in 2013.

— William Gibson (@GreatDismal) April 9, 2013

This censorship from both Apple and ComiXology shine a light on the flaws of the digital book ecosystem. Once you buy a book or app, does it really belong to you? Or can companies and services pull a book that you bought just because it can? Amazon faced the same scrutiny when it pulled George Orwell’s 1984 from a student’s Kindle. While it’s definitely Apple’s prerogative to censor apps and books, it pushes customers toward more open systems like Google’s Android.

Source: Image Comics

The universal log-in system from Mozilla, Persona, has reached its second beta today. The company hopes that Persona can become the ubiquitous log-in system for the web, but it faces stiff competition. Both Facebook and Google already have universal log-in systems that have more traction. Facebook Connect is attempting to be the ubiquitous log-in system, but many users complain that they don’t want apps or sites to have access to their social network. That’s where Persona comes in.

While other log-in systems require users to create an account with a specific website or service, Persona will work with existing accounts and services. Persona currently supports Yahoo accounts and Mozilla is working on adding more supported accounts in the future. Lloyd Hilaiel, the technical lead for Mozilla Persona, says that Persona is “designed from the ground up to be federated and distributed.”

What this means is that Persona is an open authentication system that will work with whatever apps or services that adopt it. Mozilla’s own Firefox OS will adopt the Persona standard for log-in.

Persona does offer better privacy controls than either Facebook Connect or Google+ Sign-in since it won’t access your account, but there are some security concerns. As with other universal log-in systems, if your Persona credentials are compromised, that leaves all other sites that services that you use vulnerable. Both Google and Facebook offer two-factor authentication systems but Persona currently does not. Mozilla will have to work closely with sites and services to implement Persona. Still, it’s a tough sell as there are many alternatives like OpenID that haven’t really taken off.

Source: Mozilla

Microsoft is taking web security more seriously with plans of releasing two-step verification for Microsoft accounts. This mirrors companies like Facebook, Dropbox, and more recently, Apple, in offering two-step verification for user accounts. While the security system hasn’t been released yet, LiveSide.net has leaked images of a setting in a Microsoft account that shows off the new service.

Strangely enough, the Authenticator app that is used with two-step verification made its way into the Windows Phone Store on April 4th, which has already garnered 13 reviews for a feature that hasn’t even gone live yet. When the feature does go live, the Authenticator app will be used to pair your Microsoft account to the app by scanning a QR code. From then on, users will have to enter in the randomly generated code from the Authenticator app when logging into an unrecognized device.

LiveSide.net also notes that not all apps or devices will support two-step verification. For these cases, users will have to go to their account pages for their Microsoft accounts to generate an application specific password. This is similar to what Google has with its two-factor authentication feature.

There’s no word when the feature will go live but it should be soon since the Authenticator app is already available to download.

Source: LiveSide.net