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The nuttiness that is the iPhone App Store has finally reached the destination it’s been heading towards: Apple has banned an eBook for containing dirty words.

CNET’s own David Carnoy has a new detective thriller out called Knife Music, but you won’t find it on the App Store.

That’s because when Carnoy enlisted a software developer to submit the book to the App Store, Apple rejected the book for containing “objectionable content,” citing a clause in the iPhone SDK that states: “Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

Let’s all pause for a moment to think about the idiocy of this: if Apple banned music based on offensive lyrics, not only would people be up in arms over censorship, but they’d lose a chunk of popular music. True, they have the “explicit” label, which parents can use to filter what their children purchase and listen to. And that’s a fine tool to be made available.

But Apple’s been in total denial about the iPhone’s applications, and their degree of control over it. What is the sense of banning a self-contained ebook when you can open up Safari and bookmark porn? Or drop a hardcore .m4v into your video folder? This is the kind of behavior that you’d expect from a company that doesn’t understand how computers work, or perhaps a company who’s customers don’t understand: is Apple positioning the iPhone as a product for concerned moms, or as a bleeding-edge smartphone? The biggest pain, of course, is that by this policy, iPhone/iPod users are being lumped together as one homogeneous group with one set of standards.

Look, I know Apple doesn’t exist to champion human rights. It’s a for-profit company. Apple, as always, does what’s best for Apple. But what is the logic of this? Why does Apple have such a bug up its butt about keeping the App store “clean?”

Via [CNET]