Nine Inch Nailed—more App Store rejection ‘fun’

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UPDATE: Reznor states on Twitter that the app has now been approved—unchanged.

Once again, the App Store is in the news for the wrong reason. We recently covered its bewildering rejection of the South Park app, but things really came to a head with Tweetie, which had an update booted because some App Store approval person found a rude word in that day’s Twitter trends.

Well, Apple’s at it again. Trent Reznor of NIN fame posts that the ‘nin: access’ app has been rejected on the grounds that it enables access to a podcast that has a song with a rude word in. As Reznor notes, using rather colorful language, Apple’s own Mail app lets through emails with rude words, and Safari can be used to access questionable content. But his app, which enables access to a podcast that can be streamed to the app, featuring the song The Downward Spiral, apparently enables access to external content that Apple thinks will warp fragile little minds.

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About the author

Craig Grannell is Cult of Mac's designer and an occasional contributor. He also runs iPhoneTiny.com, a Twitter-driven reviews site for iPhone apps and games. Follow Craig on Twitter @CraigGrannell and visit his website, Snub Communications.

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http://www.otheroom.com Barry Wood
I don’t see why Apple doesn’t just use an explicit tag on apps the same way they do for songs and videos. That would pretty well solve the problem.
Church of Apple
This is really starting to get ridiculous…
Scott
I’ve said this before elsewhere, but I’ll repeat it here. I think Apple should subcontract out the content evaluating/rating to a third party which specializes in this process (e.g. the ESRB). Apple could still maintain the veto power for apps that cause technical issues with the device, but they should defer all judgments on content evaluation to that other orgaization.
Apple could then allow parental controls to limit access based on a host of conditions established by the review board (13+, 18+, violence, sexual content, language, etc.) which would ultimately allow more apps into the store, while giving parents more control of the content their children have access to (win-win imo).
Glenn
NIN has every right to produce whatever content they want to produce as long as they don’t run afoul of the government, but Apple has every right to refuse to sell that content if they feel it is objectionable. Just as Playboy has every right to produce their magazine, the store owner has the perfect right to NOT sell that magazine in his store. Freedom of speech works both ways, people.
http://www.snubcommunications.com Craig Grannell
@Glenn: This isn’t about ‘freedom of speech’ nor even censorship—it’s about consistency and hypocrisy, along with the dreadful approval process in the App Store. Apparently, it’s fine to:
- Offer a web browser (Safari) that enables you to access objectionable web content.
But it’s not fine to:
- Approve an app that enables access to objectionable web content.
The NIN app was rejected because it enables access to a *podcast* that has a song with a rude word in it. How is this fundamentally different from Safari enabling access to sites with swears? Hell, I’d argue NIN’s being even more hard done by, given that most people know his songs are quite tough in terms of content, and so would expect that on buying the app. (See also: South Park.)
Overall, of course Apple has the ‘right’ to sell what it wants, but as Reznor said, this smacks of when Wal*Mart forced bands to provide ‘clean’ CDs, which were faced just a few feet away from movies and videogames where people get killed in a nasty way.