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Apple Bans RSS Reader Due To Bad Word In Feed Link

Posted by kdawson on from the rabbit-holes-have-rabbit-holes dept.

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."

12 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. Enough already, Apple by Tokerat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

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    CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
    1. Re:Enough already, Apple by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Enough already, Apple by Z00L00K · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

      Someone has to make a reality check.

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      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    3. Re:Enough already, Apple by Resident+Emil · · Score: 5, Funny

      He's apparently thinking different.

  2. Speaking as an Apple fanboi ... by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... 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.

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    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    1. Re:Speaking as an Apple fanboi ... by Mr2001 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

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      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    2. Re:Speaking as an Apple fanboi ... by beelsebob · · Score: 5, Interesting

      4. They have an automated script that launches the app, greps the text on screen for naughty words, checks it doesn't crash/access things it shouldn't/leak memory etc. and rejects apps before a human even looks at them.

      I wonder if this is the right answer?

  3. Modus operandi by ianare · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:Apple == Nazis by fractoid · · Score: 5, Funny

    Cook the apple first, preferably in a delicious pastry crust. Isn't that the American way? :P

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    Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
  5. Re:Bad words? by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's slightly more to it than that:

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

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    How we know is more important than what we know.
  6. It's feeling like a trap by Toonol · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:In other news, Apple i-sunglasses by SharpFang · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

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