And by the way, Venezuela certainly is a country where freedom of speech is extremely threatened. I personally have some friends from there, who had to leave the country a few years back because their families did not “conform” to the authorities. And they are, today, still afraid of going back to their home country because of that.

If, for instance, the book banned as an app in the Apple Store were available in a standard, non-proprietary format, it could be read by any number of programs and devices, including general-purpose ebook programs currently available on Apple’s devices.

As far as I know, though, the publisher has only done electronic releases in proprietary, device-specific formats (such as Apple i* and Sony Reader). When that’s the case, the publisher puts themselves at the mercy of the gatekeepers for those formats (in the case you mention, Apple).

Folks who want to preserve their freedom to read may want to support more open formats and devices for their reading. (For what it’s worth, nearly all the books available through The Online Books Page are in open formats, and a substantial number of commercially sold ebooks use open formats as well.)

The fact that books are going digital is old news but the fact that one of the 3 main distributors of digital literature [Apple] feels it is within their right to censor certain books is noteworthy. Should a company be able to select what the public should and should not read? This concerns me more than the fact that I might have to one day replace my mahogany bookcase with a digital one.

Readers who want to check this out for themselves may be particularly interested in the “Toughening Speech Offenses” section, describing the government’s expansion of “insult laws” that restrict the right to criticize public officials, and the “Regulating Media Content”, describing, among other things, license suspensions and threats to revoke licenses aimed against anti-Chavez broadcasters.