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Controversial Mussolini App Pulled From Apple Store
LONDON (Feb. 4) – An iPhone application that was condemned by Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors for allowing users to download the speeches of Italy's World War II dictator, Benito Mussolini, has been withdrawn from Apple's online store.
The program, called iMussolini, soared in its first week on the market to become the most popular application on Apple's Italian site by Jan. 27. Before it was pulled Tuesday, it was being downloaded by up to 1,000 users a day. The controversial app gave iPhone owners access to the full texts of more than 100 speeches made by Il Duce between 1914 and his death in 1945, as well as several video and audio clips of the dictator in full bluster.
"It is a disgrace and a surrender to crass commercialism that the Apple computing company approved the release of this 'app,' " said Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants. "This is an insult to the memory of all victims of Nazism and fascism, Jew and non-Jew."
Luigi Marino, the 25-year-old Neapolitan programmer behind iMussolini, says he killed the program after legal threats from the national film institute Cinecitta Luce, which owns the copyright to the images and clips used in the app. "That material is the exclusive property of Cinecitta Luce, whose media archives constitute its one and only source of revenue," a spokesperson for the institute said. "It also happens to represent this country's memories, which here have been plucked out of context and put up for sale."
Marino defended the download during an interview with the Bloomberg news service, saying that while he is not an apologist for Italy's fascist past, the Mussolini years were "a delicate page in our history that should never be forgotten."
There's no sign of that memory fading away any time soon. Indeed, although Mussolini led the country to ruin during World War II and oversaw the deportation of thousands of Italian Jews to Nazi death camps, far-right politicians have recently attempted to rehabilitate his regime.
Last year, Rome's mayor, Gianni Alemanno – a member of the National Alliance (AN), the descendants of Mussolini's Blackshirts and a key ally of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi – refused to categorically condemn Mussolini during an interview with Milan daily Corriere della Sera. And a day later, during a ceremony to honor World War II resistance fighters, Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa, also an AN member, said the country should also recall the losses of "other men in uniform," an unambiguous reference to Italian troops who fought alongside the Nazis.
As the popularity of iMussolini has shown, the attempt to clean up the dictator's legacy has won over some younger Italians. "This is really a flabbergasting phenomenon," one commentator wrote Wednesday on the online version of the newspaper La Repubblica, "especially when you consider the fact that the iPhone has gained cult status for the Facebook and Web 2.0 generation. These aren't nostalgic old people and historians of the fascist era but kids and young adults that spend time and money on the Internet and get their information from it."
As for iMussolini creator Marino, he's said that he may repost the app after he's scrubbed out the copyrighted material. But perhaps he should pursue another business idea he related to La Repubblica in January. "I'm thinking of making similar applications," he said. "But to avoid any scandals, perhaps they will be about people like Gandhi."
LONDON (Feb. 4) – An iPhone application that was condemned by Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors for allowing users to download the speeches of Italy's World War II dictator, Benito Mussolini, has been withdrawn from Apple's online store.
The program, called iMussolini, soared in its first week on the market to become the most popular application on Apple's Italian site by Jan. 27. Before it was pulled Tuesday, it was being downloaded by up to 1,000 users a day. The controversial app gave iPhone owners access to the full texts of more than 100 speeches made by Il Duce between 1914 and his death in 1945, as well as several video and audio clips of the dictator in full bluster.
"It is a disgrace and a surrender to crass commercialism that the Apple computing company approved the release of this 'app,' " said Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants. "This is an insult to the memory of all victims of Nazism and fascism, Jew and non-Jew."
Luigi Marino, the 25-year-old Neapolitan programmer behind iMussolini, says he killed the program after legal threats from the national film institute Cinecitta Luce, which owns the copyright to the images and clips used in the app. "That material is the exclusive property of Cinecitta Luce, whose media archives constitute its one and only source of revenue," a spokesperson for the institute said. "It also happens to represent this country's memories, which here have been plucked out of context and put up for sale."
Marino defended the download during an interview with the Bloomberg news service, saying that while he is not an apologist for Italy's fascist past, the Mussolini years were "a delicate page in our history that should never be forgotten."
There's no sign of that memory fading away any time soon. Indeed, although Mussolini led the country to ruin during World War II and oversaw the deportation of thousands of Italian Jews to Nazi death camps, far-right politicians have recently attempted to rehabilitate his regime.
Last year, Rome's mayor, Gianni Alemanno – a member of the National Alliance (AN), the descendants of Mussolini's Blackshirts and a key ally of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi – refused to categorically condemn Mussolini during an interview with Milan daily Corriere della Sera. And a day later, during a ceremony to honor World War II resistance fighters, Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa, also an AN member, said the country should also recall the losses of "other men in uniform," an unambiguous reference to Italian troops who fought alongside the Nazis.
As the popularity of iMussolini has shown, the attempt to clean up the dictator's legacy has won over some younger Italians. "This is really a flabbergasting phenomenon," one commentator wrote Wednesday on the online version of the newspaper La Repubblica, "especially when you consider the fact that the iPhone has gained cult status for the Facebook and Web 2.0 generation. These aren't nostalgic old people and historians of the fascist era but kids and young adults that spend time and money on the Internet and get their information from it."
As for iMussolini creator Marino, he's said that he may repost the app after he's scrubbed out the copyrighted material. But perhaps he should pursue another business idea he related to La Repubblica in January. "I'm thinking of making similar applications," he said. "But to avoid any scandals, perhaps they will be about people like Gandhi."
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