8-6-2009 National:
You may have read about a popular two dollar dictionary called Ninjawords being pulled yesterday from the App Store over objectionable content. You also may have read the article last week about the application that locates sex offenders in a neighborhood on your iPhone.
Well, according to Tech Crunch, Offender Locator has been in the top 10 paid applications in the last several weeks yet has now been completely removed from the App Store without a trace. If you aren’t familiar with what it does, it basically showed, using little red balloons, where sex offenders in your selected area live.
That probably wasn’t part of the problem though.
There is speculation that because Offender Locater had a price, it could be violating California law.
Why?
Well according to some Tech Crunch readers, selling people’s information for profit is illegal. However, the information used within the program is public, so that doesn't make a lot of sense. While this has not been announced as the reason the application was pulled.
Authorities also might have pressured Apple to pull it out of fear of vigilantes going after sex offenders.
But again, the flaws in the App Store are brought to the surface once again. Is there a screening process at all? There are quite a few applications that have come out lately that are pretty subjective in their purpose, but one that could possibly be violating a state law should never get passed.
The developers of Offender Locator also might sue Apple, so we’ll see how this plays out.
..Source.. by Adam Mills
1 comment:
Smart move by Apple for pulling this. I ran a test on the accuracy of the SOR a few years back, mailing out letters using the SOR. A full 80% of those letters were returned either because there was no such address or the person was not at the address listed. Could you imagine all of the innocent people that could get targeted beside RSO's and their family members? Talk about a massive lawsuit waiting to happen. The SOR is highly innacurate as officials are VERY slow to update it. Oh and yes, most states do not allow such information to be used for commercial purposes.
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