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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."
Don't discount iTunes because of the iTunes Store nonsense. It's a great music manager, especially because it exports an XML file with all songs that can be read by other applications.
M3U files have a trivially simple format, and were standard a long time before itunes came on the scene. What benefits does itunes XML file offer over and above this format?
And while we're at it, what's the deal with ipods needing a database of files (in a non-obvious format that's difficult to work with) in order to be able to play them? Isn't that just to convince people to use itunes, which exists to convince people to buy from itms?