TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

More on the Nine Inch Nails app update rejection

By Chris Meadows

Engadget looks at Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor’s response to Apple’s rejection of an update to NIN’s iPod Touch app (which we previously mentioned here). (Note that the app itself currently remains available in the store even though you can still access the same “offensive content” from it; it’s just the update that has been rejected.)

Much like the rejections of David Carnoy’s book Knife Music and Tweetie 1.3, it seems that this one comes because of the “f-bomb” appearing in some of the content within the app. (The f-bomb also appears several times in the Engadget piece, and the Reznor forum posts linked there and below, for what it’s worth.)

But what makes this rejection even stupider than either of those is that the “content” in question is some of the songs that can be streamed via the app—songs that Apple is perfectly happy to sell uncut in the iTunes music store. Reznor has famously refused to produce clean versions of NIN albums for sale in Wal-Mart as a matter of principle (though did release censored versions of songs for radio airplay). He explains:

My reasoning was this: I can understand if you want the moral posturing of not having any "indecent" material for sale – but you could literally turn around 180 degrees from where the NIN record would be and purchase the film Scarface completely uncensored, or buy a copy of Grand Theft Auto where you can be rewarded for beating up prostitutes. How does that make sense?

He has the same problem with Apple: if it’s all right for them to sell the songs uncut in the music section, how can they refuse to update an app that streams exactly the same content in the app section? (I wonder what this will mean for the Nine Inch Nails edition of “Tap Tap Revenge,” which presumably features some of the same obscenity-laden songs?)

Reznor does not deny that he still loves Apple’s products overall, “because they work 1000X better than the competition,” but finds the approval process ridiculous. He says he will certainly make the app available to the jailbreak community if they cannot get the update straightened out with Apple.

Of the other rejections mentioned above, Carnoy removed the f-word from the appbook edition of his novel, and Tweetie was able to convince Apple that they should not be held responsible for user-generated comment. Neither of these possibilities seems in the offing for the Nine Inch Nails app. Unless Apple can be convinced to make an exception, it is likely that Nine Inch Nails fans will suddenly have a big new reason to learn to jailbreak.

Apple seriously needs to lose this “zero-tolerance” approach to application rejection. It’s ridiculous in our schools, and it’s just as ridiculous here. Perhaps Apple needs to take a lesson from some authors who pre-date David Carnoy by a few years—authors such as Franz Kafka and Joseph Heller.