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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."
Apple has their hands pretty full with checking every app and rating it for the (coming) Parental Control System. They have to find a good balance between time it takes for apps to be in the App Store and false positives (like this one). It's a tightrope walk I wouldn't want to do. Still, this is pretty ridiculous.
Nokia N900 looks good enough for me to consider neither Apple, nor Sony. Thank you.
I have an iPod Touch and I am writing this on a Macbook. I don't feel violated by Apple because I am free to do whatever is technically feasible with both devices I own. I don't use Linux on the desktop (since it's utter crap to me on the desktop), so I don't care one whit as to whether or not the iPod will sync with it.