[Imc-makerspace] Fwd: Anti-iPhone iPhone game gets past censors

[Stewart Dickson]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Anti-iPhone iPhone game gets past censors
Date: 	Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:44:55 +0200 (CEST)
From: 	The Yes Lab <donotreply at yeslab.org>
Reply-To: 	mailing at yeslab.org
To: 	mathart-emsh.calarts.edu <mathart at emsh.calarts.edu>



*iPhone App About Apple's Rotten Supply Chain Gets Past Censors*
This and upcoming Yes Lab projects no hoax

    Contact: info at molleindustria.it <mailto:info at molleindustria.it>,
    michael.pineschi at gmail.com <mailto:michael.pineschi at gmail.com>

To the great surprise of its creators, a funny new iPhone game critical 
of Apple's human rights record was accepted by the iTunes 
<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/phone-story/id462806536?ls=1&mt=8> store 
and is being released today. The app, called Phone Story 
<http://www.phonestory.org/>, teaches players about abuses in the 
life-cycle of the iPhone by putting them in the manufacturers' shoes. To 
win, players must enslave children in Congolese mines, catch suicidal 
workers jumping out of Chinese assembly plant windows, and conscript the 
poorest of the world's poor to dismantle toxic e-waste resulting from 
obsolete phones.

The seriously funny new game will sell for 99 cents on iTunes 
<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/phone-story/id462806536?ls=1&mt=8>; all 
proceeds will go to organizations fighting to stop the horrors that 
smartphone production causes. Read more about Phone Story below 
<#below>. But first, a word from Phone Story's sponsors.

*Yes Lab Fundraising Campaign a Shocking Success*

Last week the Yes Lab sent you an appeal for support. We set aside forty 
days and forty nights to reach our goal on Kickstarter 
<http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yeslab/the-yes-men-present-the-yes-lab-for-creative-activ?play=1&ref=users>---but 
with your help we've gotten there in just five! (Note: if you haven't 
yet donated 
<http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yeslab/the-yes-men-present-the-yes-lab-for-creative-activ?play=1&ref=users>, 
don't let our success dissuade you! We'll use the extra money to fund 
more projects, and to develop tools <../../get-involved> andresources 
<../../kb> to help folks carry them out. And by the way, if you're a 
Drupal programmer and feel like helping to make those tools, please 
write to us <../../drupal>!)

Since our fundraising appeal is doing so well, we're launching our very 
own curated page <http://www.kickstarter.com/pages/yeslab> on 
Kickstarter, to support other cool projects---like Beautiful Trouble 
<http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/151304769/beautiful-trouble>, an 
activism manual and website written by over forty troublemakers from 
around the world, including the Yes Men. Beautiful Trouble's goal is to 
put the best tactics for creative action in the hands of the next 
generation of change-makers. Support Beautiful Trouble! 
<http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/151304769/beautiful-trouble>

*So back to those phones....*

Would you like to force an African child to mine for precious metals at 
gunpoint? "Phone Story <http://www.phonestory.org/>," a new iPhone app 
produced by Molleindustria, puts the player in the unsavory shoes of a 
smartphone executive. Each level in the game explores a different 
real-life problem in the consumer electronics life cycle: slavery and 
abuse in Coltan mines, suicide-inducing manufacturing plants, and 
health-destroying e-waste processing are reduced to a cute, low-res 
aesthetic driven by simple, addictive game play. The game is available 
in the iTunes store 
<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/phone-story/id462806536?ls=1&mt=8> for 
99 cents.

"We wanted to get this story into the hands of consumers, on the shiny 
devices we love to use but are causing this depraved, destructive 
cycle," said game developers Paolo Pedercini and Michael Pineschi.

The site provides links to organizations with campaigns to hold phone 
makers accountable for their horrors, and 100% of proceeds go directly 
to such organizations.

Apple has a well-documented and controversial history of keeping apps 
that they don't agree with out of the hands of consumers, so it came as 
a big surprise to the creators when the iPhone store accepted this one. 
"If this simply slipped under their radar, we can't wait to see how they 
respond," said Pedercini. "If it's creative enough, we might have to 
build a whole other level."

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