Apple Bans RSS Reader Due To Bad Word In Feed Link

btempleton writes "It all started when I prepared yet another Downfall subtitle parody. In this one, Hitler is the studio head, upset at all the Downfall parodies, and he wants to do DMCA takedowns on them all. (If you're a DMCA/DRM fighting Slashdotter, you'll like it.) The EFF, which I chair, blogged it on Deeplinks, and hilarity ensued. That weekend, Exact Magic, an iPhone developer, had submitted a special RSS reader app to display EFF news on the iPhone. Apple's iPhone app store evaluators looked at the RSS reader, read the feed it pointed to, and then played the linked-to video. They saw the F-word flash in the subtitles of the video, and then rejected the RSS-reading tool from the App Store. We're up to several levels of meta here — Apple has banned an app over a parody about banning, and is now parodying itself. Bonus: TFA also has the story of just how hard it is to be fully legal in obtaining the famous clip for parody."

Comments

Enough already, Apple

[Tokerat]

I'm an Apple fanboy and even I'm sick of this.

If they're not careful, pretty soon the PSP Go App Store is going to be the one making all the money. Hey Sony, PSPhone in the works?

Re:Enough already, Apple

[QuantumG]

Yeah.. it's pretty easy, you default to "Adults Only" mode, but you provide a "Clean Feed" mode which people can opt-in to. All your effort goes into bringing the "Clean Feed" up to date and, as such, even the kids won't want to use it, so one day you take a look at the numbers and say "why are we putting so much effort into this 1% of the market?" and get rid of it.

Re:Enough already, Apple

[0100010001010011]

How the fuck difficult is it to realize what an RSS reader does and to realize the app doesn't 'do' that content, it just gets it from the feed?

Does Apple have 5th graders reviewing this content?

Description: "This app downloads and displays pictures." It would be reasonable to assume that those pictures could be pornography. However that's not what the program does. Holy hell.

Re:Enough already, Apple

[i.of.the.storm]

Hell, by those standards they should block Safari, since it's much more likely and easier to access inappropriate content with. This is getting pretty ridiculous.

Re:Enough already, Apple

[Jurily]

How the fuck difficult is it to realize what an RSS reader does and to realize the app doesn't 'do' that content, it just gets it from the feed?

In fact, what's up with all that parental content bullshit? Is it going to scar children for life if they see a bad word? It's not like they don't hear enough in the television, their browser, their teacher ferchrissake.

Not to mention every other kid they come in contact with. Should we ban those too? Just lock them in a box or something.

Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that'll infect your soul,
curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war.
"Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, CockSucker, MotherFucker, and Tits"

Re:Enough already, Apple

[Z00L00K]

Censorship is more indecent than any use of profanity ever can be.

Someone has to make a reality check.

Re:Enough already, Apple

[growse]

It's made by Apple. Of course Apple would rather decide for you what you want on your phone. It's all about the *experience* remember?

Re:Enough already, Apple

[PopeRatzo]

What you can't do, however, is allow/block each and every application that your child might download from the App Store.

Actually, I'd rather see parents have the ability to block apps than Apple, which ends up blocking them for all of us.

The bigger question should be: "Why would you buy a child an iPhone?" Don't they have special phones for parents who don't trust or spend any time with their children?

Re:Enough already, Apple

[PopeRatzo]

Should parents not have the choice as to whether to allow their kids to be exposed to bad language

They already have the choice of whether to buy their kids an iPhone.

I think Fisher-Price makes a colorful little phone that only lets kids phone home.

Apple does us no favors.

Re:Enough already, Apple

[loutr]

So a parent could load up the iPhone with games and tools the kid might need then restrict it.

So, problem solved. Apple needs to get out of the iPhone app approving business.

Too complicated. It's easier sitting on your ass while the web/iphone/Xbox babysits your children and then loudly complaining when they see something you didn't want them to.

Re:Enough already, Apple

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

How is it censorship? You (not you specifically, but "you the iphone purchasers" ) bought the iPhone. You approved whatever restrictions they want to place on you by making that purchase. You have already told them they can do whatever they want on your ^H^H^H^H their phone. Having done this, what right do you have to complain when they actually do place restrictions? If you didn't like it, why did you buy a phone that inherently includes these artificial limitations?

Re:Enough already, Apple

[that IT girl]

Erm... If you're upset at the way Apple is treating their customers, I don't think running to Sony is running in the right direction.

Speaking as an Apple fanboi ...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

... I can think of two possibilities here.

1. Someone high up in the App Store hierarchy is completely batshit insane. They're a fundie wacko, or they're deathly afraid of the Think Of The Chiiildren wackos, or something like that. I really just can't believe that the orders to ban anything that can get dirty words from anywhere on the internet came down from upper management; they can't be that ignorant. So it's someone on a personal crusade who has just enough pull to make it work.

2. Apple basically wants to own every internet-enabled app on the iPhone, and they're using these dumb excuses to get rid of any competition. Sooner or later, they think, everything you do on the iPhone that isn't strictly local will go through an app bearing the Apple logo.

Either way, it's a dumb move. I'm one of those irritating smug Mac users everyone loves to whine about. The last five computers I've bought have been Macs, and the next five probably will be as well. Whenever anyone asks me about what to do with their malware-ridden PCs, I say, "get a Mac." And I was seriously considering getting an iPhone to go with my iPod and iEverythingElse ... but I'm not going to even think about it until Apple fixes whatever the hell is going on with the App Store. I really doubt I'm the only one.

Re:Speaking as an Apple fanboi ...

[Mr2001]

Speaking as an Apple critic, I think there's a possibility you missed:

3. Apple's system of approving apps has no objective guidelines, no oversight, and no accountability; the result is total fucking chaos. Individual testers are allowed to make decisions based on "offensiveness" criteria they make up themselves, and this particular app happened to be tested by an uptight moron who went to great lengths to find some reason to ban it.

Based on the stories I've heard about rejected apps being approved simply by resubmitting them, this might even be true. If so, Apple needs to fire a bunch of people, and then write a real set of guidelines so everyone inside and outside the company is on the same page.

Re:Speaking as an Apple fanboi ...

[emlyncorrin]

But in this case, the "naughty words" are embedded into a video. So it's not just scanning the text, it would have to do OCR on each frame of the video too.

Re:Speaking as an Apple fanboi ...

[selfevident]

5. The App Store is primarily a fence, not a farm. Its purpose is to make the iPhone safe as a mass market device. So long as there are _enough_ apps to keep iPhone users giggly with delight as they finger their toy -- and there are plenty -- Apple will choose to err on the side of over-censoring. Better to block an app that might offend than make the iPhone seem threatening or risque.

This totalitarianism has been so successful for Apple that we should expect it to grow upwards as Apple introduces its next round of mass-market "computers," such as the rumored iPad.

This is why

[EsbenMoseHansen]

.. I am actually happy that Microsoft dominates the market over Apple. Microsoft is bad enough, but Apple is a control-freak of a company :/

Of course, when the year of linux-on-the-desktop-comes, it will all be better. Right?

Modus operandi

[ianare]

Apple tries to suppress something it doesn't like, in a way sure to show everyone what a bunch of pricks they are, and yet no one will do a thing about it. News at 11.

Hypocritical Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't iTunes sell songs that have cuss words in them?

Seems a little hypocritical. Apple will sell songs with cuss words for money, but won't let free apps with cuss words be put on their app store? (I am assuming the RSS feed app was free)

note: I am not an iPhone user, I don't know how all that works, just guessing here

Re:Bad words?

[QuantumG]

There's slightly more to it than that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BcdY_wSklo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyNmGHpL11Q

It's feeling like a trap

[Toonol]

I managed to avoid the whole Apple experience; never bought an iPod, never bought a song from iTunes, never had any desire to get an iPhone. I'm feeling a bit relieved. The whole thing feels like a trap. If I had a thousand bucks tied up in all this interconnected web of apps, platforms, and media, with it's seemingly ever-constricting chains, I'd be pretty irritated.

Lesson I've learned? Always buy IP-violating, unregulated, cheap Chinese knockoffs.

Re:It's feeling like a trap

[X0563511]

You know what else makes a good media manager?

A filesystem.

You know, a system that manages files? Like media files?

Re:It's feeling like a trap

[Bake]

Really? You have a file system that allows me to group together songs that I have previously rated at 4 stars and I haven't listened to for 3-4 weeks and have it order them by the year their respective album was released? Wow.

Re:It's feeling like a trap

[Dhalka226]

I even have these things called "moods" that you might not be familiar with.

Apparently right now it's "snarky bitch." I'm sure a good recommendation algorithm could find you some appropriate songs to listen to.

Re:It's feeling like a trap

[Civil_Disobedient]

how can I make my playlists so I only see my Dance music albums and I'd like my Jazz playlists to only show those by Monk and Coltrane and ignore the rest

Oh, that's easy. First thing you do is learn how to make playlists, genius.

Oh..where do I press to sync my music player with all these files?

COPY. PASTE. Let me know if I'm going too fast for you.

I also can;t see how to subscribe to my podcasts, where do I do that on this filesysyetm you talk of?

It's right next to the button where it wipes your ass for you.

Am I the only one...

[Anonymous Coward]

... whose eyes sort of glossed over on reading the summary? It reads like something you'd expect some valley girl to be gossiping about over the phone on a teen drama programme.

Re:Bad words?

[GospelHead821]

You say, "it would soon fall out of favor for something that would be more offensive." That's technically true, but I think that looking at the way it would happen is revealing. The new word, Belgium, for example, wouldn't be intrinsically offensive. Some words were created offensive because somebody wanted a word that was "filthy." Consider fornication versus fucking or feces versus shit.

Some other words are offensive because of religious objections, but in fairness, the ideas behind the words wouldn't exist if it weren't for religion. Consider, for example, "God damn it." You hear it often enough that you don't think about it, but it's a curse. The speaker is asking God to condemn the object of his wrath. It's become rather commonplace and nobody really thinks about that meaning anymore, but consider how offended you'd be if somebody said it and actually meant it. That's some pretty bitter hatred!

And here we go again.

[91degrees]

loop_point:
Apple rejects an app for stupid reasons.
This will spread across the web.
Apple will looks bad.
Apple will "reconsider" and accept the app.
Lots of people will completely miss the point and think it's all okay.
Apple will then reject another app for stupid reasons.
goto loop_point;

Don't ridicule the Führer ...

[meist3r]

Or Steve Jobs will lose his temper ... turtle necks are the new uniforms. Apples the new swastikas ... want proof: http://www.apfelfront.de/propaganda.html

Re:In other news, Apple i-sunglasses

[SharpFang]

because, unlike in the US, the sight of European topless girls doesn't cause anguish, disgust and general trauma.

Apple run by the CCP?

[Fuzi719]

Apple is becoming like the CCP (that's the Chinese PRC gov't for the great uneducated), with the App Store like the Great Firewall. Both seem to be run rather arbitrarily and reactionary. While Apple has some nice hardware and software, their practices and the drooling fanboys completely turn me cold. I'd rather buy something, anything, else even if it has less functionality overall.