Apple bans iPhone apps related to BitTorrent | Hacker News Reader

Apple bans iPhone apps related to BitTorrent

last100.com

9 pointsmrspin11 comments

This is good news for Google Android and the Android Market, if Apple decides to further pursue this policy. Can you imagine how secure Google's position in search would be if their competitors censored search results tangentially related to BitTorrent?

Unfortunately for Google, Android is, and will be, crippled at every step by manufacturers and carriers. Apple at least has the luxury of making sure that the iPhone will be crippled in a way that it still remains very useful for most people and that its core functionality is not jeopardized.

Can you imagine how irrelevant having a bitTorrent client on a phone is to most people?

It's irrelevant to me too, so I sympathize with this view. Objectively speaking though, BitTorrent seems to have lots of users.

And speaking more generally, I do believe there is a sense of trust that is broken when a customer realizes that a business is intentionally standing in the way of something he or she wants to do. If that something isn't BitTorrent for one user, it could very well be whatever Apple decides to block next month.

Also: the app in question is apparently a remote control for a BitTorrent client running on a real computer, so it might have wider appeal than your question would suggest.

If your customer wants to use your product for illegal activity, it's wise to avoid helping them.

BitTorrent is just a protocol. It's not illegal. It's just a protocol to transfer data. Also used to distribute linux distros amongst other legal uses.

Spray paint has lots of legal uses as well, but you'll still find it locked up in a cage at Home Depot.

Are these apps that download content to the phone or manage torrents that the users' home pc's are running? If it is the latter, I can see it being very useful for the target demograph.

What's wrong with a web interface to the home PC? Or would that be too simple?

Google is censoring BitTorrent-related content already. utorrent.com (which belongs to BitTorrent, Inc.) had a Google custom search for torrent files. Google censored it, so now they are using Ask.

http://torrentfreak.com/google-custom-search-cuts-utorrent-o...

http://www.ask.com/web?q=ubuntu&search=search&qsrc=0...

How do people get torrent files? From the web. So, if Apple is going to be consistent, a web browser shouldn't be allowed on the iphone. Silly.

(And of course, you could always get around this by using a bittorrent client that can be controlled with a web browser.)

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