Trent Reznor Fires Back at Apple: He’s Pissed

I hate to say “I told you so,” but please allow me to quote myself from yesterday’s post about how Apple screwed over Trent Reznor by rejecting an update to the Nine Inch Nails application for the iPhone that had already been approved (read here – Apple F–cks Trent Reznor Like an Animal)…

“The App Store approval process it clearly a joke at this point.  Major changes will need to be made before things get ugly.”

Ladies and gentlemen, things just got ugly.

Reznor has just responded to Apple’s joke of an approval process in the NIN forums.  Here is what Trent had to say (warning – this is uncensored and explicit):

Now, “The Downward Spiral” the album is not available anywhere in the iPhone app. The song “The Downward Spiral” I believe is in a podcast that can be streamed to the app.

Thanks Apple for the clear description of the problem – as in, what do you want us to change to get past your stupid f–king standards?

And while we’re at it, I’ll voice the same issue I had with Wal-Mart years ago, which is a matter of consistency and hypocrisy. Wal-Mart went on a rampage years ago insisting all music they carry be censored of all profanity and “clean” versions be made for them to carry. Bands (including Nirvana) tripped over themselves editing out words, changing album art, etc to meet Wal-Mart’s standards of decency – because Wal-Mart sells a lot of records. NIN refused, and you’ll notice a pretty empty NIN section at any Wal-Mart. 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?

You can buy The Downward F–king Spiral on iTunes, but you can’t allow an iPhone app that may have a song with a bad word somewhere in it. Geez, what if someone in the forum in our app says F–K or C–T? I suppose that also falls into indecent material. Hey Apple, I just got some SPAM about f–king hot asian teens THROUGH YOUR MAIL PROGRAM. I just saw two guys having explicit anal sex right there in Safari! On my iPhone!

Come on Apple, think your policies through and for f–k’s sake get your app approval scenario together.

Just for reference, here is the rejection letter that was sent by Apple:

Follow-up: XXXXXXXXXX

Dear Craig,

Thank you for submitting nin: access to the App Store. We’ve reviewed nin: access and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store at this time because it contains objectionable content which is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:

“Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

The objectionable content referenced in this email 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

Regards,

iPhone Developer Program

Finally, here is an update from the app’s developer:

v1.0 is live. v1.0.3 got rejected due to content yet the app has no content in it. this was mainly a stability release to fix the bug that crashes the app for international users. the bug was fixed 24 hours after 1.0 went live and we have been waiting for apple to approve it ever since. meanwhile the app continues to get a growing number of 1 star ratings from international users understandably frustrated by the bug. but looks like our hands are tied.

apple is not allowing us to make the current app more stable because there is “objectionable” content online (yes on the internet). so we are essentially not allowed to fixed bugs unrelated to the issue.

we removed the song “The Downward Spiral” from the server, hoping to appease apple and get this bug fix through. however i have yet to receive a reply.

So they removed the song “The Downward Spiral” . How do they know that Apple was referring to the SONG? I assumed they were referring to the whole album since it contains songs like “Closer”, which contains the refrain that I paraphrased in my earlier post.

Either way, the situation is now a comedy of errors on Apple’s part and Trent Reznor has every right to be mad as hell.

Apple, the ball is now in your court.