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Last updated: Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Trent Reznor, the driving force behind the industrial metal band Nine Inch Nails (NIN), is reportedly a big fan of Apple’s iPhone. So it’s not terribly surprising that NIN recently released an iPhone app, nin: access, that is designed to provide fans with news and information about the band, including concert footage, scheduling updates, and music remixes. Like many other band apps, nin: access taps into the iPhone’s GPS to help fans locate other fans nearby. Unfortunately, however, NIN fans can’t download the app — at least not right away. According to a post by Reznor on the NIN online forum, the Apple App Store rejected nin: access for violating the store’s terms of service. “The objectionable content referenced in this e-mail,” the anonymous App Store reviewer said, “is The Downward Spiral. Since the app is live on the App store, please make the necessary changes to the application as soon as possible, and resubmit your binary to iTunes Connect. Thank you.” What About iTunes? The App Store’s refusal to allow download of nin: access 1.0.3 underscored the somewhat capricious logic of Apple’s vetting process (the same vetting process, as many pointed out, that initially approved the horrific Baby Shaker app). As Reznor pointed out, The Downward Spiral is not actually part of nin: access — it’s part of a podcast that users can download from the band’s Web site. Moreover, the entire song can be purchased and downloaded from Apple’s iTunes Store for just 99 cents. “How does that make sense?” Reznor asked. “You can buy The Downward F***ing Spiral on iTunes, but you can’t allow an iPhone app that may have a song with a bad word somewhere in it?” The prohibition against possibly indecent apps seems even sillier given the fact that Apple included a Web browser in the standard software of the…

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Apple May Loosen Content Restrictions on App Store

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