Offender Locator is a fairly high-profile app that allows users to locate registered sex offenders. It had been hovering right around the top five paid apps for quite some time, that is, until yesterday. According to CNet, the app has been abruptly yanked from the App Store for legal reasons.
Not so surprisingly, those exact legal reasons remain unclear, but some have speculated that it may be illegal to profit from the sale of publicly-available criminal information in the state of California. The only problem with that theory is that other competing sex offender locating apps, such as Sex Offenders Search and StaySafe, remain in the App Store.
As we speak, ThinAir is still trying to get in contact with Apple’s legal team regarding the removal. ThinAir’s lite version of Offender Locator remains in the App Store free of charge.
Because of the complete lack of information, it’s hard to even form an opinion on this matter. It’s probably best to wait this one out before jumping to any conclusions, which is obviously going to be very difficult considering Apple’s track record with unfair app rejections and removals.
UPDATE: Many of our readers pointed out that the paid version of Offender Locator is back in the App Store, so we contacted the ThinAir regarding the removal and have yet to receive a response. However, CNNMoney.com’s Apple 2.0 blog states that ThinAir simply removed California’s data from the paid version of the app. We will update the post again if we get an official response.
Looking around at the apps ( very quickly ) and understanding the nature of the core service of the app, I would guess one possibility is the idea of profiting from a “public service.” Other paid apps ( again, a very quick look ) seem to include a handful of additional features that are related but not publicly available through other means.
Granted, I’m not saying that the publisher of the app should not get paid for their work but not necessarily $100 or $1,000s for an app that offers a “public service.”
So are we going get refunded if we paid for the app?!
if its against the law to profit from such things, then Apple reserves the right.
It’s doubtful that you’ll get refunded for the app, but it won’t stop working for you either.
As far as Apple goes, of course they have the right the pull an app for legal reasons, but they should be far more open with the developers regarding why an app was pulled and what changes the dev can make to get it back on. Consistancy has been a HUGE problem too. I mean they decide to pull ALL ebooks from the store, but then obvious copyright violations like the app “iflighter control” slide right through (look it up in app store, it’s a blatant ripoff of Firemint’s Flight Control). Apple really needs to look at how they treat their developers, their immensely important to distinguishing the iphone from other smartphones.
The app is still on apples store . Look it up