US regulators are investigating Apple's subscription terms

The problem is probably not the 30% cut Apple is demanding, but rather that they're also demanding that publishers that use Apple's service cannot offer their wares through other services for less than they would offer to Apple. This kind of price-fixing hurts competition as Apple never has to compete on price.

People (sane ones) are rightly scandalized by Steve Jobs' unbridled avarice and the apparent imbalance of his current sick-bed medications.

That said, the content publishers may find an effective work-around (loophole)within the verbiage of Apple's new subscription policy. Said policy requires that an equal or better deal be offered for purchase within subscription based apps.

Jobs should be wholeheartedly given this better deal. A hugely much better deal in fact. Publishers/Content providers should capitulate fully and wholly to any and all of Jobs' publically stated goals and standards, include offering iTunes specific versions of all their content for in-app purchases with the value-added proposition of fully and completely censoring out all content that would be considered offensive to anyone, anywhere on the planet. They then should offer these Jobsian-purified versions at low or absolutely no cost (FREE) for in-app purchase. The uncensored (evil) and obviously (by Jobs' standards) less valuable versions would then only be available directly from the (bad)publishers, but enabled on non jail-broken iDevices through the presence of these same enabling iTunes apps.

The following small software apps could be developed to aid publishers in easily attaining these goals of attaining Jobs' pure, impeccable standards of decency and political correctness.

1) Burka-Matic

The Burka-Matic app would redact, cover up or obscure (with a virtual Burka) any and all bare skin and all other visual depictions that would be considered sexually offensive, violent or exploitative in any way by anyone, anywhere within all print, graphics and video content.

2) Redacto-Matic

The Redacto-Matic app would redact all politically incorrect speech of all forms including offensive language text, political satire (cartoons), and any other subject matter in print form that could be viewed as offensive by anyone, anywhere on earth.

3) Bleepo-Matic

The Bleepo-Matic would bleep-out all language and subject matter from the audio tracks of music, movies, video games and other audio of all types that could be deemed in any way offensive by anyone, anywhere on earth.

Together, these three apps would make all content acceptable and compliant with Apple' stated puritanical policy goals. These collective program's resultant output should be proudly and overtly shone to everyone, everywhere. Celebrating the bright rays of truth of what our reality and existence would be in a world under the dictates of one Steve (Jackboot) Jobs. It should not be hidden or obscured in any way. It must be in-your-face obvious.

Charges of hypocrisy are but one objection away for mister Jobs. Obviously, if nudity, violence, and vulgar or politically incorrect speech are unacceptable in one form of content, then it should be unacceptable in all other forms as well. Following this line of reasoning to its logical end nets the iTune app and content store with many many bare shelves. Without the added value of proper censorship effected by these or similar apps in all forms of content within its walled garden, their offerings would dwindle precipitously.

What of XXX Porn? Well, the premium (value-added--censored) iTunes specific versions of publications such as Playboy or Hustler wouldn't be to everyone's liking, obviously, but it would pass Apple's censorship guidelines and the enabling app would be on the non jail-broken iDevices for all the nasty people who want those socially corrupted versions instead. Same goes for all other forms of content. Wanna bet on which payment method option will sell the most copies?
Just sidestep these tyrants.

The ultimate alternative to this method would be mass, systemic rebellion against Apple's walled-garden in the form of legitimate content and apps providers joining forces with jailbreak hackers to provide temporary point-of-sale unlocking (jailbreaking) then re-locking of iDevices to enable getting their apps onto iDevices, on their and their customer's own terms.

At any rate, something must be done. Imagine the alternative. How much further controlled and locked down these iDevices will be when Jobs' completes his version of cloud computing for mobile. Combine Mobile me, their recent acquisition of a streaming company and iAds, and you have the makings of a totalitarian regime.

Publishers/App builders must take a stand now because it's only going to get worse. Apple's exclusionary Walled-Garden must die.

Further, Google's proposed "better deal" is also outrageous. Paying a 10 percent premium just to effect an online transaction is crazy beyond measure. If the government's proposed an equal amount of tax on all transactions as such, the whole world would lose their bloody minds. Google's counter offer just looks somewhat reasonable when contrasted against Apple' crazy demands.

People know that the marginal cost of production of online content is near zero. They reasonably expect prices to reflect that fact. Further, the internet is supposed to enable direct to customer sales cutting out the middlemen. it's enough we all have to pay credit card companies 1-3% just to effect each sale. Adding yet more middlemen (especially rapacious/abusive ones) negates much or all of the direct purchase savings.

App stores should be viewed as advertising mediums. Where it receives a reasonable finders fee/commission for attracting/finding the customer and for (optionally) effecting the sales transaction. Their remuneration must be commensurate with their actual costs of providing such a service. Apps programs and subscription enabling apps must be paid a reasonable commission once. Free subscription enabling apps transactions should charge a finders fee/commission paid by their publishers. Any further in app purchases, subscription purchases and renewals that are transacted outside the app store should not pay anything to the app store.
If, however, a payment system through that app store is used for these further purchases, a transaction free (not a commission related to the value of the content) should apply.
This makes the app store a transaction middle man, not a content middleman, and thus a very tiny percent , or a fixed transaction fee should apply. If credit card companies can massively thrive charging 1-3% of the purchase price, certainly any app store can also thrive charging double that or less 2-6%.

The situation with Apple's app store is most egregious because you must go through them and only them to sell to their customers. Apple puts forward the pretense that they are protecting their customers. BS. They could easily have a default, highly scrutinized, curated area of their app store for their innocent and unknowing customers to acquire known good apps without going to maniacal lengths to keep theirs and only theirs, the place for acquiring apps for iDevices.
Parental control style lock-down under the control of the device's owners is desirable and the only acceptable solution. Let other, third party app stores compete for being the best at curating apps. Apple has already been found lacking in preventing their (so-called)vetted/curated apps from covertly accessing and broadly sharing user data and personal information to third parties with out their explicit consent. Competition by reputable companies in the area of certifiably clean apps would absolutely improve this situation immeasurably.

Rebel from these monolithic app store concepts now my dear friends, Google's too. Apple's control freakery will only get worse as its market share increases. What will you do when they repeat this latest type insult then, after you cede to its current demands? By then you'll be irrevocably "Borged"!

I've resisted the temptation to purchase an Apple "i-product" for many years (except the iMac for my spouse) not because of any perception that the products themselves are flawed, but rather because of the unavoidable imposition of the Apple i-Tunes / App Store (and no, I don't want to bother jailbreaking the device).

The announced 30% subscription tariff is hardly surprising and, along with the inability of the content providers to obtain customer details, effectively gives Apple an unassailable position as a content aggregator and intermediary for what has become a very widely purchased platform.

And there's the catch - millions have purchased these devices because of what they could do simply and well. In doing so, this user base has blissfully yielded incredible power to yet another large corporate to decide what we'll pay for content, and even what content we might be permitted to see, or what applications we might run on the device.

People still focus debate on the elegance or otherwise of Apple's iPod, iPhone and iPad - but it's become increasingly clear over at least two years that they are irrelevant to the main game of Apple, and what level of market control that game will bring.

Maybe if I just place all of my faith and trust in Steve, all those concerns will vanish...