Last week, I posted a pointer to my parody of a famous clip from the movie Downfall and I hope you enjoyed it. While the EFF itself didn't make this video, I do chair the foundation and they posted a pointer to it on the "Deep Links" blog. All well and good.

Some time earlier, an iPhone app developer put together an iPhone app which would display the EFF blog feed. This wasn't an EFF effort, but the EFF gave them permission to put the logo in the app.

Recently, Apple's App Store team evaluated the app. The pulled up the EFF blog feed, and played the video, presumably using the built in YouTube playing App which Apple provides for the iPhone. And in the subtitles I wrote, at one point when Hitler was particularly angry, the fake text had him say "fucking." This is quite mild compared to most of the Downfall parodies on YouTube, and indeed many other videos on YouTube. I debated taking it out, but it's appropriate for the character to be using strong angry language at that point in his rant. And it's funny to see Hitler swear in English so I left it in.

The App Store team -- dare I call them the Apple App Store content Nazis, or is that too meta? -- declared the app unsuitable for the iPhone store. Note that the app doesn't contain any dirty words, and the EFF blog rarely contains them, and didn't contain them in this case, only pointing to the video. Of course, the EFF as a free speech organization is not about to declare its blog will be free of bad words in the future, though they are a fairly unlikely event.

Yet this, it seems, is what Apple is protecting its users from. Apple claims that it needs to control what Apps you can install on an iPhone. You need to "jailbreak" the iPhone to install other apps, and Apple says you don't have the right to do that. Sometimes such walled gardens start off with what you may agree are good intentions, such as stopping malicious apps, or assuring a quality experience with a product. But always, it seems, it devolves to this.

You can also read the EFF Deep Links article on this bizarre denial. Apple seems to have become a parody of itself. How long before we see a Downfall clip where Hitler is an Apple app store evaluator, or a fake Steve Jobs? Of course, that had better not contain any upsetting words, even in links.