Looks like yet another app has been kicked off the App Store with no explanation. This time, it was an app called Slasher. It was simple enough. It just featured the image of a knife and when you made a stabbing motion with your iPhone, it made a horror sound.
For the moment, the only reason that’s being tossed around for this app’s removal is it may have violated an application regulation that prohibits apps that contain “objectionable” material.
Sure, the Slasher app may have been silly and pointless, but what was so wrong about it? I’d be interesting in hearing the official reason, if there ever is one.
[via MacWorld]
The thing crashed my phone during install, and it took several reboots to get it working again. Also, I would not be surprised to learn the “Psycho”-like music used in the app was copyrighted.
Could it be, just maybe, that this app was taken down because it’s not only completely useless but also (and mostly) because it’s completely in bad taste?
The app MAY (we don’t know for sure) have violated copyright, or it could have just been “objectionable” to even one person.
If it was taken down only because someone MAY have thought/felt/imagined it was objectionable we need to remember one thing; no matter how “objectionable” something MAY be, it SHOULD be also covered under the First Amendment as free speech and the designer’s expression of such. It is protected.
IF it had violated copyright; redevelope the parts that MAY have been copyrighted and re-release the app. The designer should have been given the opportunity FIRST from Apple to make immediate changes OR to pull it for the moment. We NEED to hear from the designer.
The App Store should NOT be the sole venue for purchasing/obtaining applications for one’s iPhone. Everyone is trying to crack the phone itself; how about freeing us all from iTunes and the App Store (a MONOPOLY)??? Apple has positioned itself as a monopoly on the ONLY way to add iPhone applications. BAD!
What has the Department of Justice said about this even more robust control of the iPhone? Has the DOJ even brought Apple to task, or is Apple getting free reign? I suggest everyone call the DOJ and ask them.
…in the meantime, let’s get another way to get apps onto an unbroken iphone. Developers? Programmers? Where are you?!
drawde is high as a kite. the first amendment doesn’t apply to the apple iphone app store, just like it doesn’t apply to what i tattoo on your body.
you can’t break up a “monopoly” just because a company is the only one that provides service to its products. if that was legit, schick razors and hoover vaccuum bags would be in big trouble.