Murderdrome is not Ulysses, Lolita or Lady Chatterley's Lover. It's a dark, bloody comic strip marked by the type of over-the-top violence that has made its genre so popular among young readers with a lot of pent-up rage.

But Murderdrome has now joined the pantheon of suppressed fiction as the first digital book banished from Apple's App Store by censors in Cupertino.

By now, you might have heard that Murderdrome has been banned by Apple. This is due to the part of the sdk that suggests content must NOT offend anyone in 'apple's reasonable' opinion. Here at infurious, we would love to work with Apple to ensure a content rating system can be put in place to allow material that is no more offensive than many of the R rated films available to download on iTunes.

PLEASE leave a comment committing your support to us - we'll forward ALL of these to Apple, so that we can ensure that not only Murderdrome, but that ANY comic submitted to Apple doesn't fall foul of the same censorship.

Rushdie's lawyer Mark Stephens said today that the authors of the book now "accepted that much of the story published in the Mail on Sunday was false". He said that Evans had been "over-egging" his position at the time: "He was a police driver making out he was an armed special protection officer," he said.

Stephens added that Rushdie had made no requests for damages, nor for any changes in opinions in the book, merely for "the falsehoods" to be changed. "The authors have admitted that there were falsehoods in the original manuscript and have made amendments accordingly," he said.

The ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will leave the rights in the hands of Penguin Group Inc. and the heirs of Steinbeck's widow, Elaine Steinbeck. John Steinbeck died in 1968; his wife in 2003. The appeals court in Manhattan said a lower court judge misapplied copyright law in awarding the rights in 2006 to the son, Thomas Steinbeck, and granddaughter Blake Smyle, who already receive a portion of the proceeds of sales.

The Obama campaign has written a 40-page rebuttal that criticizes author Jerome Corsi as "a discredited, fringe bigot" and his book as "rehashed lies."

The book is a compilation of all the allegations and innuendo against Obama - that he was raised a Muslim, attended a radical, black church and secretly has a black rage hidden beneath the surface. Obama's rebuttal is titled "Unfit For Publication" and is set to be posted on the Obama campaign's rumour-fighting website, FightTheSmears.com.

On e-mail lists and in interviews, university CIO's and other information-technology professionals say their mission is getting derailed and staff time is being overloaded by copyright takedown notices, "prelitigation settlement letters," RIAA-issued subpoenas, lobbying efforts, and panicked students accused of piracy.

Now, feeling burdened and betrayed, some of those universities are quietly fighting back, resisting requests for information and trying to quash subpoenas. Those that do so, though, find that their past compliance — and the continued compliance of their peer institutions — is being held against them.

"We feel like we've been led down the garden path, and our interest in working in partnership and leading our mission as educators is now being used against us," said Tracy Mitrano, director of IT policy at Cornell University.

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In court documents and interviews, the RIAA has argued that past compliance with the subpoenas means that they were not an "undue burden" before, so they should not be one now. Both Morehead State's and Marshall's motions to quash the subpoenas were denied. The judges in both cases said there was no "undue burden" because investigations were not actually necessary to abide by Ferpa regulations. In the Morehead State ruling, the judge pointedly noted that "Morehead has responded, without objection, to virtually identical requests in other, similar litigation."

The recently reopened message board on the Twilight series Web site has been very active, and on Amazon-where the novel remains ranked #1 in sales-the book has generated more than 1,600 reviews (nearly twice the reviews of the previous book, Eclipse) and more than 1,000 "customer discussions." Unhappy readers expressed a variety of opinions, including incredulity with certain plot points or the way threads were tied up, while others felt the writing wasn"t as strong as in the previous books.

In one heavily trafficked thread entitled "Unhappy with Breaking Dawn? Don't burn it-RETURN it!," commenters debated whether returning the book was a valid way to express unhappiness with the book. "Technically, reading a book and returning it is theft of knowledge," read one post, while the original commenter, a former bookstore employee, wrote, "I don't advocate making a habit of buying new books, reading them, and returning them. But once in a while... I do think mass returns are a useful form of consumer protest." Another poster recounted, anecdotally, returning the book at Borders: "They took back my book with no problem. Got into a discussion with the cashier about how I was the 15th (!!!) person to bring my book back today."

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The publisher of a book that Salman Rushdie says portrays him as "mean and arrogant" has delayed publication for a week following Rushdie's threat of legal action. On Her Majesty's Service by Ron Evans was due to be published yesterday, but John Blake Publishing has moved this to August 11 in the hope that once Rushdie has read the book in its entirety he will see it as a "light-hearted and affectionate" portrait.

Rushdie's lawyers contacted John Blake earlier this week over excerpts in the weekend papers from the former Special Branch officer's memoir. These claimed that the security guards protecting Rushdie during the fatwa against him "got so fed up with his attitude that they locked him in a cupboard under the stairs and all went to the local pub for a pint or two". Evans also claimed that the guards nicknamed Rushdie Scruffy, which Rushdie said was untrue.

Managing director John Blake said he was confident that once Rushdie had read the whole book he would realise it was no threat to security. He added: "If anyone should be defending freedom of speech it should be him ... I can't believe that he'd really want to ban a book because it says that detectives named him Scruffy -- in a way that's almost affectionate."

"We really want to maintain and have a greater leadership position in photography," said Nina Hoffman, president of National Geographic Books. Leah Bendavid-Val, director of photography publishing for National Geographic Books, said the books in the Focal Point series "will appeal to connoisseurs, professionals, collectors, serious students of photojournalism and all lovers of photography."

As such, the books are moderately high-priced; the fall list includes three $40 hardcovers—Windows of the Soul: My Journeys in the Muslim World by Alexandra Avakian, The Life of a Photograph by Sam Abell and Odysseys and Photographs by Maynard Owen Williams, Volkmar Wentzel, Luis Marden and Thomas Abercrombie—as well as a $75 tome: Reza War + Peace by Reza. Hoffman said that while the fine art photography market is small, "it is at the heart of National Geographic. We want to stake a claim, and we do in the magazine world. We want the same recognition in books."

Amazon and the publisher Grove/Atlantic will give away the electronic download of a new novel, Spirit House, by Christopher G. Moore, to Amazon Kindle customers beginning Friday, in advance of the book's release in print on Aug. 28, the companies announced on Wednesday. Morgan Entrekin, the president and publisher of Grove/Atlantic, said in a statement that the deal with Amazon "is a great way to expand Moore's audience even further." The Kindle, a portable electronic reader that downloads books, newspapers, blogs and magazines, sells on Amazon.com for $359.

Dante, the father of the Italian language, fled his native city in 1302 after being sentenced to death for crimes including fraud and extortion. Florence council was to have healed the 700-year rift with the poet by presenting the city's golden florin to Count Pieralvise Serego Alighieri. The count, however, believes the Florentines are not sorry enough.

Last month, a meeting of the council's cultural committee, held to annul the expulsion order, prompted the kind of rancorous divisions that led to Dante's exile. Five councillors voted against the annulment and several others stayed away.

Count Pieralvise said it was "anything but a collective 'mea culpa' and symbolic ending of [Dante's] exile". "I could have wept when I read the comments of some of the councillors," he said. The proposed reconciliation, the initiative of two councillors from Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party, ran into fierce opposition from the radical left. Nicola Rotondaro, the leader of a communist group on the council, said Dante "did not need the council to rehabilitate him".

"If he had been sent to his death, would we perhaps have asked for his resurrection?" he said. The count said it was "as if the people of Stratford-upon-Avon had quarrelled over an event in memory of Shakespeare".