Last week the first iPhone (and iPod touch) app to feature nudity was live in the iTunes App Store. Technically, however, it was simply a change in the server behind the app -- the developer added nude images.

Subsequently, however, the app became unavailable. The developer first reported that their own servers couldn't keep up with demand for the newly nudified images, but it turns out Apple laid the hammer down on the "soft-core porn" app:

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.

Given that Apple has included new parental controls and App Store restrictions in iPhone 3.0, including a declaration for nude content, and given the eternal argument that nudity is available for age-appropriate viewers via iTunes movies, is there some contradiction still at work? Or is Apple drawing the line artificially close for now while it watches and gauges reaction?

[via CNN]

Well, at least it took longer than push notification or turn-by-turn navigation, right?

As should be no surprise, given how the porn industry is typically among the first to adapt to new technologies, Macenstein reports that the first app to feature nudity has made it into the iTunes App Store.

The app is rated 17+ for frequent/intense sexual content or nudity, and frequent/intense mature/suggestive theme. This means the new Settings > General > Restrictions > feature for parental controls in iPhone 3.0 can be used to globally allow or block the app (or any app based on several age-based levels). MacRumors explains the results:

If an App falls outside of the allowed rating they will simply disappear off your home screen. Once you turn the restrictions off again, the affected apps reappear.

This should mean we don't see any more app rejections for search-based language or content, but it also leads us to wonder how long it will be before we see major adult entertainment companies come knocking on the App Store door...

Newsflash: There's porn on the internet. The iPhone brings you just the internet. Now, with tortoise-like speed, the rocket scientists over at Time seem to have put 1 and 1 together and come up with ZOMGiPR0nZ!!11 Mobile erotica. The pornet in your pocket. Seems people are even -- gasp! -- Googletubing for it!

Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, because, frankly, I'm not a sociologist, and I can't tell you if North American faux-puritanism, divided by ultra-conservatives perpetually getting their hands caught in the proverbial cookie jar, multiplied by institutionalized madonna/whore complexes, all equals a continental multiple-personality disorder so confusing it makes the average episode of Lost seem like a linear 1970s serial drama.

How so? Read on while I rant on... after the break.

What I can tell you, without being an economist either, is that there's a boatload of money to made in pornography -- both defending and decrying it. (And often both, as Captain Family may well spend the day fund-raising a righteous protest only to rush home at night, whip out the credit card, and get his Gonzo on).

And I can certainly say, without being a porntrepreneur, that the first racy code was likely programmed for Apple's revolutionary internet device somewhere between Steve Jobs saying i and Phone on the Macworld stage way back in 2007. And by a 13 year old no less. In between breaking Blu-Ray encryptions. For porn.

So is this, as doubtlessly many pundits will claim, a reason to panic?

No. It's just another in a long list of reasons to parent.

Of course the internet has content -- pornographic, violent, cruel, hateful, duplicitous and otherwise -- that is utterly inappropriate for children (and it doesn't take the Dali Lama to argue a lot of adults would be better off unexperiencing them as well). The world is a dark dangerous place, online and off. It's a parent's job to keep their kids out of the alleys, and off the hitch-hiking, and away from the saber-tooth tigers, and no where near the internet pr0n.

Unfortunately, that means getting daddy off his Xbox and mommy off her RAZR long enough to remember they have a kid buried somewhere under all the techno-babysitters money can unfortunately buy. (Hey, TiVo-to-go up some 50s sitcoms sometime for a refresher on what it looks like to have more than one family member stationary in the same room).

And if they do, Apple offers all sorts of parental controls for their iPhone. For the Mobile Safari browser. For the iTunes store. For content ratings. And what about the argument that poor, addle brained parents who can't even program their TiVo's might not know how to activate parental controls on their child's iPhone? Apple even provides a parental control simple enough for them -- don't buy an iPhone for your child.

(And while you're at it, put their computer in the living room, walk up behind them at random intervals, and don't let them out of a Linux Live CD sandbox. I don't need little Jimmy's XP becoming spambot #876,762,912,662, b'okay daddy Luddite?)

Now excuse me while I go lock you out of, and myself into, the mother load of haptic hedonism...

That's the rant, and I am out of here...

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