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iPhone Web Claims Draw Governmental Rebuke in UK
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Aug 27, 2008 11:30 AM
from the zoolander-bit dept.
from the zoolander-bit dept.
Wills writes "Apple has been running an iPhone ad saying 'all parts of the internet are on the iPhone', but it had to be withdrawn after Britain's Advertising Standards Authority ruled that it gave 'a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone' because the iPhone cannot access Flash or Java – features that are essential to some websites. This raises an interesting issue of where do you draw the line between essential and non-essential features of websites. What should the web look like? Should government authorities be the ones making that decision?"
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Confusion (Score:5, Funny)
The ad repeatedly says you can get the whole 'internet', not just the web.
Apple, I want gopher dammit!
Re:Confusion (Score:5, Insightful)
You're modded funny, but this IS another valid reason it's false advertising. If they want to decide what runs on the phone, they really can't claim it supports the whole internet. You can't have it both ways.
That comment about whether the government should really decide is very trollish. Supply and demand have in fact decided that many sites require flash*. The government is only enforcing truth in advertising. Not everything they do is automatically wrong, ok?
*no matter how much it may annoy us.
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Re:Confusion (Score:5, Informative)
"That comment about whether the government should really decide is very trollish."
Not only that, but it's also completely irrelevant to the story. The Advertising Standards Authority (who deemed the advert misleading) was setup by the advertising industry's trade body and has absolutely nothing to do with the British government.
The ASA ruling is non-legally binding although all major broadcasters and publishers generally adhere to it. The appropriate governmental agencies are Ofcom (office of communication) and OFT (office of fair trading) which have the relevant legal powers. Neither of which were involved here.
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Re:Confusion (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Confusion (Score:5, Insightful)
99.9% of the population don't know what Gopher is, let alone expect it to be on the iPhone
Gopher is a contrived example, but what about other protocols? The average user might not use NNTP, but they probably do use some kind of IM protocol, whether it's something proprietary like MSNM or AIM, or something open like XMPP (e.g. GTalk). They might use VoIP, again with either a proprietary protocol like Skype or a open one like SIP. They may not understand the protocols, but they know that they use these things over 'The Internet' and if something advertises the whole Internet then it should allow them. As it is, it doesn't even support the whole web.
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Re:Confusion (Score:5, Insightful)
It will do what most people want it to do.
Yes, but this doesn't make the advertisement true or acceptable. The same argument can be made for ISPs' advertisements of "unlimited Internet" (unless you consume too much) or "6 Mbps download" (for the first 3 seconds) -- these are both misleading even though most people will not suffer from these statements.
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Re:Confusion (Score:5, Interesting)
This is certainly OT, but it annoys me to no end when hotels do the same thing. "Wireless High Speed Internet!" -- when all they allow is web access. Believe it or not, some people care more about port 22 than about port 80. I guess if I were in the UK, I could sue.
The Apple case has some ambiguity. What is "access"? What constitutes "the internet"? Is it still the internet without Java? Maybe. Is it still the internet if it is restricted to the web? NO.
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keyword 'all' (Score:5, Insightful)
When I hear the phrase..
'all parts of the internet are on the iPhone',
I tend to think I can access just about anything. I think expecting java or flash to work isn't asking much yet that's not available so I do think saying 'all' is a little misleading.
I think a simple re-wording would get their point across and yet not be invalid.
What about NNTP? P2P? (Score:5, Interesting)
Huh ? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the summary: "Apple has been running an iPhone ad saying 'all parts of the internet are on the iPhone'"
followed by: "This raises an interesting issue of where do you draw the line between essential and non-essential features of websites. What should the web look like? Should government authorities be the ones making that decision?"
What the hell does that have to do with anything ? I didn't RTFA but it sounds like the problem is that they said that ALL parts of the Internet are accessible via the iPhone ... not "all but flash and java" ... which has nothing to do with "essential vs. non-essential", what-so-ever. Sounds like a simple case of false advertising to me.
Re:Huh ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Flash and Java are not parts of the Internet. They are content served across it. You can download them without the applications in place to use them, even.
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Re:Huh ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Arguing that you can download the flash file, you just can't do anything useful with it I would say definitely comes under the heading of following the letter rather than the spirit of the regulation.
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what? (Score:5, Funny)
Holy non sequitur batman!
Should government authorities ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Should government authorities be the ones making that decision?"
Should Apple?
Governement? Not so much... (Score:5, Informative)
Source:http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/about/ [asa.org.uk]
Archie, gopher, WAIS (Score:5, Funny)
The iPhone App store better get cracking on those Archie, Gopher and WAIS clients.
It doesn't raise those issues (Score:5, Informative)
That isn't raised unless you think it's quite alright to claim that a Prius is an "all terrain vehicle" (as long as 'all terrain' doesn't include deep mud, steep unpaved hills and stuff like that).
This isn't about the government making the decision that "this or that is an essential feature of websites", it's about Manufacturer A claiming that Product B can do Feature C when obviously it cannot do Feature C but only a subset of that feature.
Lying to sell your products is not allowed in the UK. It may be in the US or elsewhere in the world, but this is about the UK. And in the UK they have this pesky law about not claiming your product can do things that it cannot do.
It's not 'governmental rebuke' (Score:5, Informative)
The Advertising Standards Authority [asa.org.uk] is an independent advertising industry body; it is not government funded, and is not a 'government authority'.
ASA is not a "government authority" (Score:5, Informative)
"Should government authorities be the ones making that decision?""
The Advertising Standards Authority is not a government authority. It was established by the Advertising Association, a trade body representing (from the wiki) "advertisers, agencies, media and support services in the United Kingdom" The ASA's introduction on wikipedia reads:
This is how most media watchdogs in the UK are run. Important facts like this should really be checked before making very flawed summaries. For if Apple wanted, they could simply ignore the ASA's ruling. Most carriers would probably refuse to run the adverts, but it's most certainly not a "government decision".
Bollocks. (Score:5, Insightful)
The iPhone can access flash and java content perfectly.
That it can't render it is a different argument entirely. It's particularly specious for proprietary shite like Flash which subverts the whole paradigm of the web being built around open protocols and formats.
Jeez, I suppose my Linux/PPC box can't access "all of the web" because fscking Adobe haven't been gracious enough to release Flash for it yet, and Gnash doesn't work perfectly on all flash "content".[0]
Utter bollocks.
[0] "content" in used here its loosest possible sense, which includes "effectively content-free content".
Text. (Score:5, Insightful)
Essential web services?
ftp?
gopher?
ssh?
IRC?
NNTP?
SMTP?
Here is a better idea, if only there was a law that required any company doing commerce to design their "store/web-site" so that entry, egress, navigation, and information were easy to access by EVERYBODY regardless of physical ability. Or wait there is. ADA (US-Centric I know, but I am making a point so bear with me) states that even web-sites should use correct tags so Blind people can still use them. Text-to-speech an brail readers only work when there isn't crap in the way.
Heaven forbid an option to view/use the WWW in plain-text would exist. The only purpose all this eye-candy serves is to advertise something.
Proposal: make every web-design student use a text-only browser (like lynx) for the first 2 years of school.
Re:Who misses flash? (Score:5, Informative)
Who misses flash?
Those of us that use sites that are built with it. While I don't need it for most mobile browsing, there are some sites where it is required. If the device can play YouTube flash videos, why can't it load the flash sites too?
I will be purchasing an iPhone shortly and know of its shortcomings but to blindly support their decision not to include something that is so very popular on the web is a bit ridiculous IMO.
Parent
Re:Who misses flash? (Score:5, Informative)
It does not play "flash" YouTube videos. YouTube on the iPhone is a custom client app that does not use flash at all. It won't even play all the videos YouTube has to offer only the ones that can be accessed in h264 format so the app can use the iPod video decoding software/hardware to play it with their custom interface (flash only videos will not play at all).
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Re:Somewhere, a bridge is missing its troll... (Score:5, Funny)
OK, it's up [homestarrunner.com].
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Re:Ubuntu doesn't support the Internet either (Score:5, Insightful)
Has Ubuntu created an advertising campaign where it implies that it's the only operating system that works properly on the internet, despite the fact that many others have more solid support apart from the user interface?
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