ORIGINAL FRENCH ARTICLE: « Juif ou pas Juif », un beau raté dans le contrôle d’Apple
Translated Tuesday 20 September 2011, by Bill Scoble
and reviewed byThe app for iPhone and iPad is astonishing to say the least; for just 79 cents, one can have a supposedly exhaustive list of all the famous Jewish people in the world.
The incriminated app. Note the incredible option offering to find a Jew "at random".
What does the app’s description say? "You too can keep a catalogue of Jews in your phone - you never know"? Well no, but not far off: "Hey, did you know that Timsit was Jewish? - Of course, and was Marilyn Monroe really a Jew? How many times have we had this conversation, without knowing the answer?" And for the more fundamentalist, the app also presents the "half-Jews", from their father’s line, and the newly converted. It has been on sale for a month, without seeming to disturb Apple.
The creator of the app assures us that the reason for it is purely "for fun." SOS Racisme, LICRA (International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism) and some other organisations have clearly not found it to their taste and have complained. The complaint is also against Apple, who normally examines all applications thoroughly before validating them for the App Store. Remember that Apple censored Charlie Hebdo’s app, for "extreme" and "pornographic" content...
The French penal code leaves little ambiguity over what the creator and distributor of this app are risking, since it is illegal "to put or to hold in computerised memory, without the express consent of those concerned, personal data which, directly or indirectly, makes ethnic or racial origins, political, philosophical or religious opinions apparent..." A crime which is "punishable by five years of imprisonment and a 300,000 euro fine."