The Nokia Ovi Store appwizard makes it look enticingly easy to submit an app to the Ovi Store. So I just did that two days ago. Today I received this email:
FAILED: Potential Copyright Violation.
SUMMARY: It does not appear that you have the rights to distribute the icons, screen shots, or RSS feeds used in this application. If you believe this has been failed in error, please contact publishtoovi.support@nokia.com with documentation which indicates that you have permission to submit this content to the Ovi Store.
I have conceived, built and grown the web-application based on which the Ovi App was submitted to Nokia. Now Nokia, in an all-powerful way seems to have determined that the icon and RSS feed was not created by me. Unlike Google Apps which has figured a fairly elegant way to detect and know if you own the domain that you are signing up Google Apps with- Nokia seems to have figured its best to unilaterally decide whether you actually own the content that you are submitting to them or not.
Maybe its just me, but based on the stories I have read about how Apple and Nokia treat the Apps that are submitted to them- I am somehow reminded of the 1984 Macintosh commercial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8)
I wonder if Microsoft would have chosen this path of approving applications for the Windows Desktop- where would the state of the computing industry be today.
Why are App developers treated guilty until proven innocent?
Note the "or"; do you own the rights to the RSS feeds you're using? Also, it's great and appreciated that you're getting the story out, can you show us your app anywhere?