1. Should Apple conduct extensive screening of apps before they are allowed to be sold on the App Store? Why or why not?

2. Do research to determine the current status of the FCC investigation of Apple for banning use of the Adobe Flash software on devices that use the iOS operating system.

3. What do you think of Apple’s guideline that says it will reject an app for any content or behavior that they believe is“over the line”? Could such a statement be construed as a violation of the developer’s freedom of speech? Why or why not?

Apple’s App Store has been a huge success ever since it was launched in 2008. As of April 2013, the App Store offered more than 500,000 applications available for sale to owners of Apple iPhone, iPad, and iPod devices—with more than 4 billion downloads in the first quarter of 2013. Before software applications can be sold through the App Store, they must go through are view process. Apple has been accused by some of using clandestine and capricious rules to reject some programs—thus, blocking them from reaching the very large and growing market of iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users. One application developer complained: “If you submit an app, you have no idea what’s going to happen. You have no idea when it’s going to be approved or if it’s going to be approved.” The developers of an app called “South Park” complained that their app was rejected because the content was deemed “potentially offensive,” even though episodes of the award-winning animated sitcom are available at the Apple iTunes Store. In September 2010, after more than two years of complaints, Apple finally provided application developers the guidelines it uses to review software. Most guidelines seem to be aimed at ensuring that Apple users can only access high-quality and noncontroversial apps from its App Store. Some of the Apple guidelines are clear and their rationale is easy to understand, such as “apps that rapidly drain the device’s battery or generate excessive heat will be rejected.” However, other guidelines are unclear and highly subjective, such as “We will reject apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, ‘I’ll know it when I see it.’ And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.”(“I know it when I see it” was the phrase used by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to describe his ability to recognize rather than to provide a precise definition of hard core pornography in his opinion in the case Jacobell is v. Ohioin 1964.)The Electronic Frontier Foundation believes that while the guidelines are helpful, in some cases Apple is defining the content of third-party software and placing limits on what is available to customers of Apple’s App Store. By way of comparison, Google places few restrictions on developers of software for its competing Android Marketplace. However, there have been many low-quality applications offered to Android Marketplace customers, including some that include malware. Indeed by early2011, Google had pulled 21 Android applications from its Android Marketplace because, once downloaded, the applications not only stole users’ information and device data, but also created a backdoor for even more harmful attacks. Apple’s decision to finally share its applications guidelines may have been an attempt to combat the rapidly increasing popularity of the Android. It may also have been a response to a U.S. Federal Trade Commission investigation of a complaint from Adobe concerning Apple’s banning of the Flash software from devices that run Apple’s iOS operating system. (Adobe ®Flash ®Player is a browser-based application that runs on many computer hardware/operating system combinations and supports the viewing of so called “rich, expressive applications,” content, and videos across screens and browsers.)