Does Apple Owe Banned Hottest Girls an Apology?
There was a lot of confusion yesterday regarding the removal of the first porn iPhone app, “Hottest Girls.” First everyone assumed Apple gasped at its oversight and barred it. Then the developer claimed his servers were crushed by overwhelming demand and he had to retool. Then Apple made a statement published to CNN’s site: “Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography. The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content. This was a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program. The application is no longer available on the App Store.” So who’s to blame and what’s the fallout? Unless Apple wants to change its advertisements from the iconic dancing silhouette to something more suggestive, it probably shouldn’t approve pornography on its devices. B
