Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor has used the internet for many things: fan remixes, giving away free albums, Twittering about JJ Abrams’ Star Trek, and so on. But he’s become most known for his online rants.

His newest target: Apple. Apparently a software update to the highly popular NIN iPhone app was rejected due to “inappropriate content” from the 1994 album The Downward Spiral, a record that is available unedited on the iTunes store at this very moment. Sez Reznor:

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?

Making matters even more ridiculous, the rejected update included absolutely zero new content and exists only to further stabilize the already-available app. In other words, whatever is “objectionable” in Apple’s eyes can be downloaded with no problems, but an attempt by the developer to make it run better is out of line.

We here at SPJ are unapologetic Mac nerds, but Apple’s judgments of what is appropriate in one storefront and not appropriate in another seems to get sillier by the day. Hopefully a little star power is enough to get these policies re-examined.