5 religious-themed apps banned from iTunes

[rug]

By Brian Pellot
Religion News Service
Posted: Friday, Jan. 24, 2014

Unlike rival Android, owned by Google, Apple’s operating system for the iPhone and iPad is a closed platform on which every app must be approved by the company.

Apple’s developer guidelines prohibit obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory apps that “in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable by iPhone users.”

Free speech and digital rights advocates, including San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, rail against these red lines and call on Apple to “give up the keys” to its walled garden, but Apple refuses to budge.

Because apps are typically rejected before hitting the market, it’s difficult to determine how many apps have been banned. Here are five apps with religious themes that Apple has rejected or pulled from the iTunes store:

1 Me So Holy

2 Jew or Not Jew?

3 iSlam Muhammad

4 Manhattan Declaration

5 Exodus International

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/01/24/4635045/5-religious-themed-apps-banned.html#.UuKF700o45s

Descriptions at link.

[MADem]

1. This one seems funny!

[rug]

2. I like the bonus one.

BONUS: Send Me to Heaven

This one’s got nothing to do with religion. The Send Me to Heaven app encourages smartphone users to throw their expensive handsets as high as possible. The phone’s accelerometer tracks the distance recorded and charts users’ scores on a leader board. Apple rejected the app in August for “encouraging behavior that could result in damage to the user’s device.”

[cbayer]

3. Much as I have some objections to Apple's stranglehold on this,

I have to applaud their decisions that ban apps that are overtly bigoted.

[Deep13]

4. same here. censorship by a giant corporation...

...is not much better than censorship by the state.

[cbayer]

5. It's a tough line.

A store has the right to not sell certain things.

And this is one of those cases that falls in that area.

But, if you are the only game in town, is it censorship if you decline to sell certain items?