Last September it was revealed, much to the delight of millions of iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users, that a version of VLC would now be available on Apple devices through the company’s App Store. Developed in the open source spirit and offered for free by mobile company Applidium, the app was given the blessing of VideoLAN. The reach of the mighty VLC had been extended and users far and wide rejoiced, but not for long.

One of the original developers of VLC, Rémi Denis-Courmont, angrily pointed out that incompatibilities exist between Apple’s DRM policies and the terms of the GNU General Public License under which VLC is offered. While the GNU license allows Apple to offer an iOS version of VLC, the layer of DRM it puts over the top of the application was a no-no.

“Today, a formal notification of copyright infringement was sent to Apple Inc. regarding distribution of the VLC media player for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch,” wrote Denis-Courmont on October 26th 2010, adding that the likely outcome would be that Apple would be forced to pull the free app from the App Store.

And yesterday, that’s exactly what happened.

In a post titled “There’s no app for that (anymore),” Denis-Courmont celebrates his victory.

“At last, Apple has removed VLC media player from its application store,” he wrote. “Thus the incompatibility between the GNU General Public License and the AppStore terms of use is resolved – the hard way. I am not going to pity the owners of iDevices, and not even the MobileVLC developers who doubtless wasted a lot of their time. This end should not have come to a surprise to anyone.”

While disclosing that i’m the fairly happy user of three iOS devices, i’m going to take the stance of the layman here and risk incurring the wrath of the hardcore supporters of the GNU public license. For the man in the street this decision sucks and this statement from Denis-Courmont is insensitive to say the least.

Look, I loathe Apple’s restrictive practices and DRM with a passion too but the vast majority of Apple users – the vast majority of regular computer users, period – couldn’t give a rat’s ass about this kind of dispute. And why should the layman care? DRM? Open source what? GNU? Isn’t that some kind of cattle?

The net result is that a perfectly good product, a free product wrapped in DRM that serves no practical use in this case, is no longer available to the masses. And understandably the man in the street won’t give a damn about the great philosophy of freedom behind the GNU license nor the evils of DRM. He will care only that VLC is not available any more and he can’t play his videos.

The great irony here is that it’s these kind of disputes, between the interests of one company and those of another, that causes all sorts of complex licensing issues in the music and movie industries. Those issues cause distribution problems and an inability to fulfil demand. The result is gaps in the market which cannot be served because of legal issues.

And what fills that void every time? Piracy.

It’s no surprise then that the free, open source VLC for iDevices is only easily available from the likes of Installous. What has the world come to?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

To make BitTorrent downloads on one device accessible on others, all the major BitTorrent clients have developed web interfaces. These allow users to start, stop and pause downloads from wherever they are. Transmission, the favorite BitTorrent client of many Mac users, also has a web interface, albeit a limited one in the eyes of most iPhone and iPad owers.

To fill this gap, developer Luka Hlastec coded a native remote access App for the Transmission client named iControlbits. The App, which controls the Transmission client daemon via the RPC protocol, has more features than the standard web interface making it both convenient and useful.

“I’ve made it for myself, for managing transmission downloads,” Luka Hlastec told TorrentFreak when we asked him about his motivation to develop a Transmission App.

“I’m using Transmission daemon on my NAS device. With this app I can connect remotely to my NAS from everywhere and manage downloads and Transmission server settings. You can also start Transmission on your Mac and enable remote access and then connect with my app.”

Among other things the App allows users to start, stop, remove and pause current transfers. In addition, it can connect to multiple Transmission ‘servers’ with the option to set and change speed limits for the server as well as individual downloads.

iControlbits, currently sold for $1.99 in the App store, works as advertised but could benefit from some extra features. In particular the option to add new downloads would be a nice one to have. The developer is aware of this and hopes to release it soon. “I have coded a feature for adding new downloads, which I’ll probably include in next version,” Hlastec told TorrentFreak.

But user satisfaction is not the biggest worry for the App – Apple’s anti-torrent police is the more imminent threat. As many people know, Apple is notoriously known for banning all applications that have anything to do with BitTorrent. This was kindly demonstrated three months ago when a new remote control App was booted from the App Store in just a few days.

Let’s hope that for Hlastec and Transmission using Apple customers, iControlbits doesn’t share the same fate. We have a few dozen promo codes for people who want to try the App for free.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

“Because this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store,” was Apple’s official explanation to the BitTorrent ban. However, we’ve now learned that those who are creative in the App submission process, can get through.

This week the BitTorrent based “IS Drive” App was approved by Apple and added to the App store. The application allows users of Imageshack’s torrent download service to control and add torrent downloads through a handy interface. In addition, the App shows screenshots of completed video downloads.

Although the audience for IS Drive is limited to premium Imageshack Torrent Drive users who also want to cough up $4.99 for the iPhone App, the approval is noteworthy because Apple has always banned everything related to BitTorrent. We are pretty sure that BitTorrent Inc. would have loved to release a free remote control App for uTorrent as well, but they decided to settle for an iPhone web interface instead.

TorrentFreak spoke to the developer of IS Drive, which was previously available on Cydia under the name “Jack Torrents”, about his victory and the chances that the App is allowed to stay on the App store

“I’m on dangerous ground here, and I know that,” Derek Kepner said. “I’ll probably add a search feature where it’s up to the user to manually add the torrent site they want. The app will not be designed to easily break the law and I hope no one intends to do so. But if a user is determined to break the law, what business is that of mine or Apple’s? They could do the same in Safari anyway, right?”

Kepner wrote the App because he loves Imageshack’s Torrent Drive service, and found himself wanting to queue something up to his Torrent Drive account when he was out of the house. This is exactly what IS Drive is for, and it works seamlessly.

Before submitting it to the App Store, the application already gained an audience at the Cydia store for jailbroken iPhones. However, by using just the right wording and avoiding the evil ‘torrent’ stigma, Kepner got it approved by Apple as well.

“I always had the thought that if I didn’t call the app a “torrent client”, Apple would probably let it through the review process. After all, there is no real torrenting happening on the client side. It’s *not* a torrent client. It’s an ImageShack Drive client,” Kepner told us.

“Plus, I didn’t see any reason for the app to be rejected in Apple’s recently released guidelines. So, I was very careful with this release to not use the dirty word ‘torrent’, and I’ll continue to carefully add new features, so stay tuned.”

IS Drive is now available in the App store for $4.99 for all Imageshack torrenters.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Now things are back on track as Alec has teamed up with a new designer Miles Lorry to revitalize the newly and slightly renamed ‘appDowner’. Available in beta “soon”, appDowner will be compatible with iPhone 3.0 devices, so what’s the deal?

“The concept of appDowner has changed slightly, from being a simple ‘smart’ BitTorrent application to a full on App Store replacement,” explains Alec.

“No longer will you have to remember and type in the URL to your torrent file, simply click the “Store” tab on appDowner, and you’ll be brought to a beautiful interface designed by Miles (which isn’t quite ready to be shown off yet, but he assures us that it will be very, very soon!) which will allow you to search and find the apps you’re looking for.”

Unlike the official App Store, there will no iTunes-like approval process to get your own applications onto the appDowner store, with Alec promising that submissions to the system will be accepted within a week.

While BitTorrent is employed to serve apps to the user, the appDowner torrent client can also be used for non-appDowner downloads too

When released in beta, appDowner should become available via Cydia/Icy.

Stay tuned for updates

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Maza Digital submitted Drivetrain to Apple for approval back in April, and resubmitted the App after he made a few small UI changes. He then received an email in return saying that the review would take longer than expected.

This was followed up by a second email in which Apple rejected the application for inclusion in the App Store, telling Maza Digital;

We’ve reviewed Drivetrain and determined that we cannot post this version of your application to the App Store at this time because this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store.

Of course, not only are all BitTorrent clients absolutely legal (people infringe copyright, not software) but Drivetrain is just an application to control a torrent client and as such goes absolutely nowhere near any copyright infringing material.

“By now I am very disillusioned with the whole AppStore process, Maza Digital told TorrentFreak in a response, adding “I find it rather ridiculous that they have rejected an app that does not do anything that may be ‘often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights’.” However, it seems that Apple has decided that everything BitTorrent related is a no go for the AppStore.

A ridiculous move by Apple and a step too far. Quick, ban Safari so no-one can use Transmission Web Interface .

Via iLounge

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.