Political commentary has always been a big part of our culture and a significant mainstay on the world wide web. On the whole, this has been the case because the medium is so good at conveying information without the threat of censorship or retribution. That said, of recent note is the Apple App Stores rejection of the NewsToons App, an iPhone application that delivers satirical cartoons as seen on the website, www.markfiore.com, as well as links to the news articles that served as their inspiration. Mark Fiore, himself, became the first exclusively Web-based cartoonist to win the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in the last few weeks, and this honor, coupled with public outcry over the incident, led Apple to rethink their position on the rejection, and as of the publishing of this article, the NewsToons App ($0.99) is available at the Apple App Store for download.

The incident in question brings up an interesting point on censorship that has been floating around the web these days with Google’s issues with censorship in China and the FCC vs Comcast ruling over companies rights to police their own content: where does one draw the line on censorship? Apple being a public enterprise, with its own rules and decisions about policy enforcement, obviously has the right to draw its line just about anywhere it desires, yet it’s relevant to point out that this isn’t always in their best interest, or in ours.

As restated from PCWorld.com, the United States, not to mention most other democratic nations, has a long tradition of lampooning its public figures and political leaders with satirical writing, drawings and radio and television shows.

Apples initial judgment against the NewsToons app was the idea that the material depicted in the application was offensive to many of it’s customers, so was not fit to be included in its online store, yet these are the same ideas that newspapers and opinion columns run every day of the year, and if we were to censor these, there would surely be public scrutiny, so then what exactly is the problem?

Apple’s censorship of what is essentially a long historied tradition is, in essence, a really big deal. It undermines the fabric of a society that has based itself around a culture of open consumables and free speech, and while people will argue monumentally about how certain ideas and thoughts, openly expressed in a manner that is respectful and heartfelt, will tear our country apart, or in the case of a corporation such as Apple, drive business away, I’ve often found that this isn’t the case at all, and that many of these naysayers, were prone to overreaction.

The issue with a relatively new medium such as the internet, iApps, and digital content in general is that so many of the battlefields have yet to be drawn with any clarity, and the government has less control over internet content and services than practically any other institution in use by the United States consumer.

The internet is not a business in and of itself, yet a small portion of corporate America controls the majority of internet resources, putting these companies in the interesting position of policing public policies and sentiments directly without outside controls. And while, to this point, very little has been done to obstruct the free expression of services and speech using corporate methods, the idea that something could and eventually will happen is the mainstay argument of the case between the FCC and Comcast, with the government supporting net neutrality and Comcast seeking to continuing enforcing its own version of policy.

Ultimately these corporations walk a fine line with regards to policy decisions in this age of digital electronics. And it’s easy to see that we are a long way from meeting the needs of the many, as opposed to the few in this regard. Yet we as a culture are continuing to expand, and policies will need to find a way to meet these burgeoning needs half way if companies and consumers wish to safely co-exist.