Although the App itself is not quite revolutionary, the fact that Apple allowed a BitTorrent-based app into their iPhone store is. Previously, all BitTorrent related submissions were rejected because BitTorrent is often used to “infringe copyrights”, according to Apple.

By carefully avoiding the dirty word “torrent” or anything that could hint at unlawful use of the app, developer Derek Kepner passed Apple’s stringent approval regime. The big question was whether Apple had changed their ‘policy’ or if the approval was an oversight at the company. It turns out that the latter was the case.

Kepner informed TorrentFreak that he got a call from Apple a few hours ago, announcing that IS Drive would be booted from the App store. The Apple employee cited section 22.4 of the App Store Review Guidelines: “Apps that enable illegal file sharing will be rejected.”

“I mentioned to the person that called me that my app doesn’t do anything that can’t be done in Safari. It sounded like he wasn’t going to change his mind though,” Kepner told TorrentFreak.

“I’m very disappointed by Apple’s decision. A lot of people think BitTorrent is just for piracy, but it’s not. I wanted to help change that misconception with this app. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t seem to be interested,” he added.

Despite the setback, the developer is not giving up so easily. He’s currently drafting a letter to Apple where he is going to explain in detail how his App does nothing different than a web browser, and that it’s not a pirate App. Below, Kepner shared a few sentences from his writing to Apple.

I’d just like to reiterate that my app does *not* present the user with any pirated materials. Nor will it *ever*. I feel very strongly about that. If that’s why you’re rejecting my app, you’re mistaken.

It presents the user with a field to paste a link. So do all of the third party web browsers on the store, all the FTP clients, etc. If you take my app down, I demand that you take those apps down too.

Kepner is totally right of course. IS Drive is not enabling illegal file-sharing any more than a regular web-browser. However, somehow we doubt that Apple will be easily convinced, to them BitTorrent is synonym for piracy.

“I feel like I’m fighting for the BitTorrent community here. Wish me luck,” Kepner concluded.

Finally, although IS Drive was the first App that was linked to a web-based torrent download service, there were already Apps that allow BitTorrent downloads via the Synology Disk Station such as SynoLoad and SynoDS.

Expect these to be removed in the coming days. Right Apple?

It is just this kind of inflexibility which encourages Apple users to jailbreak their machines and head over to Cydia, which they are doing in their hundreds of thousands.

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.