The rules about what types of content can and can't be in Apple's App Store are still fuzzy, but one thing's certain: Steve Jobs doesn't want to sell porn.

Despite yesterday's iPhone debacle, Jobs was still in a chatty-enough mood to respond to a concerned customer's e-mail questioning Apple's role as "moral police" of its App Store. The customer, Matthew Browing, was referring to the App Store's initial rejection of an app containing Mark Fiore's Pulitzer-winning editorial cartoon, as well as the company's recent porn ban.

In his reply, Jobs admitted that rejecting Fiore's app was a mistake, and he wasn't shy about advertising his biggest competitor's product as a phone for porn lovers:

Fiore’s app will be in the store shortly. That was a mistake. However, we do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone.

TechCrunch's MG Siegler, who originally reported the e-mail exchange, noted the "and" typo in Jobs' response, but he said he verified the sender by checking the e-mail's IP headers.

Jobs' purported e-mail response is believable, as it comes in line with a statement the CEO made during a question-and-answer session at Apple's iPhone OS 4 event earlier this month. A journalist asked whether Apple would consider allowing customers to load apps through means other than the App Store, and Jobs again noted Android as an option for porn fans.

"You know, there’s a porn store for Android," Jobs said. "You can download nothing but porn. You can download porn, your kids can download porn. That’s a place we don’t want to go, so we’re not going to go there."

Jobs' opposition to porn is loud and clear, but Apple's crackdown on sex-tinged apps can be described as a "semi-ban" at best. The Playboy app remains in the App Store, as does the Sports Illustrated app, because they come from "more reputable companies," according to Apple's vice president of marketing, Phil Schiller.

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Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com