Open Letter to Al Gore

Late last week, I sent this letter to Al Gore’s office in Tennessee.

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December 27, 2008
Honorable Albert Gore, Jr.
2100 West End Avenue
Suite 620
Nashville, TN 37203

Dear Vice President Gore,

I am writing you in your role as a director of Apple, Inc. about the opportunity to use Apple’s iPhone platform as a tool for American political dialogue.

I am a software developer who has embraced the platform as a third-party application developer. One of my iPhone projects was a small puzzle application that I submitted to Apple in September called “Campaign Trails”. It contained a collection of puzzles that, when solved, revealed quotes by John McCain and Barack Obama. Its purpose was to add to our understanding of the two candidates by drawing attention to their public statements and it was intended to be non-partisan and fun.

Unfortunately, although this “app” was submitted in September, it required approval from Apple before it could be released, and I received no feedback at all from Apple until November 12, when I received a vaguely-worded rejection asking me to resubmit it. Curiously, two minutes earlier I had received a second identical rejection for a second application which I had submitted in mid-October, as I hoped at the time that my original submission would soon be approved and released. No one at Apple has confirmed this, but it seems clear to me that these two applications were deliberately set aside until after the election.

Because their original purpose had passed, I decided to combine the Obama quotes from both applications into a revision that I retitled “Obama!” which I submitted in mid-November. After several weeks of waiting and phone inquiries through Apple’s developer relation support line, I received this new rejection notice:

Follow-up: 56311537

Dear RightSprite.com,

Thank you for submitting Campaign Trail to the App Store. We've reviewed
Campaign Trail and determined that we cannot post this version of your
iPhone application to the App Store because it contains content that 
ridicules public figures and 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." 

If you believe that you can make the necessary changes so that Campaign
Trail does not violate the iPhone SDK Agreement we encourage you to do 
so and resubmit it for review.

Regards,

iPhone Developer Program

(Please note: I am not affiliated with RightSprite.com; the misidentification appears to have been a result of confusion in the App Store review team.)

On further inquiry, I learned that the reason for this rejection was my use of a political caricature from Dave Counts, a political cartoonist working for John Kerry in Massachusetts. The caricature may be seen on my blog, at http://blog.neontology.com/posts/2008/12/15/rejected-cartoon. While I do not agree that his caricature is offensive, I asked Dave to develop an alternate image that we’ve used in a new version that was resubmitted to Apple on December 17.

I hope that by the time that you receive this, the revised application will be approved by Apple and be available for download in Apple’s online store. But considering the real possibility that my project may still not receive Apple approval, I am presently working to make it available for Google’s Android platform and on the web using Adobe’s Flash technology.

The more important question for you is whether or not you think that it is good business for Apple to block politically-related applications on the iPhone. I believe that Apple’s concerns are based on fear and a failure to recognize the iPhone platform as a new form of media. But my view is hindered by Apple’s unwillingness to communicate with me about this issue. I also see Apple’s lack of transparency in the app review process and failure to respond appropriately to third-party developers as serious problems.

Ironically, news stories this week have covered the popularity of a category of Apple iPhone apps that are based on flatulence (http://venturebeat.com/2008/12/23/iphone-fart-app-pulls-in-nearly-10000-a-day/). Hopefully you and I agree that that is not the only form of hot air that should be available in the App Store.

with very best regards,

Tim Burks
TootSweet Software
Los Altos, CA