Bask in the seething hostility of his response posted on the NiN official forums: “I’ll voice the same issue I had with Wal-Mart years ago, which is a matter of consistency and hypocrisy. Wal-Mart went on a rampage years ago insisting all music they carry be censored of all profanity and “clean” versions be made for them to carry. Bands (including Nirvana) tripped over themselves editing out words, changing album art, etc to meet Wal-Mart’s standards of decency – because Wal-Mart sells a lot of records.

“NIN refused, and you’ll notice a pretty empty NIN section at any Wal-Mart. My reasoning was this: I can understand if you want the moral posturing of not having any “indecent” material for sale – but you could literally turn around 180 degrees from where the NIN record would be and purchase the film “Scarface” completely uncensored, or buy a copy of Grand Theft Auto where you can be rewarded for beating up prostitutes. How does that make sense?”

How indeed? And now for the post watershed bit. I highly recommend you send the kids to bed for this one because Reznor’s about to unleash his selections of very naughty words.

“You can buy The Downward F******g Spiral on iTunes, but you can’t allow an iPhone app that may have a song with a bad word somewhere in it. Geez, what if someone in the forum in our app says F**K or C**T? I suppose that also falls into indecent material. Hey Apple, I just got some SPAM about f****g hot asian teens THROUGH YOUR MAIL PROGRAM. I just saw two guys having explicit anal sex right there in Safari! On my iPhone! Come on Apple, think your policies through and for f**k’s sake get your app approval scenario together.”

I’m going to throw my hat in the ring with Reznor on this one, and not just because he’s a billionaire rocker with an army of salivating lackeys who’d undoubtedly murder me by a thousand piercings if I disagreed. He has a point, as evidenced by the Baby Shaker debacle. Apple’s rules are being applied rigidly and often without recourse to any common sense whatsoever, which is always going to cause problems.

Still, as long as the company continues to draw such amusing ire, I’m all for it.