A colleague at work today told me her son had noticed that Apple’s iTunes Terms of Service prohibits the use of iTunes to make a nuclear bomb …

”APPLE INC. SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR iTUNES”

”10. Export Control. You may not use or otherwise export or reexport the Apple Software except as authorized by United States law and the laws of the jurisdiction in which the Apple Software was obtained. In particular, but without limitation, the Apple Software may not be exported or re-exported (a) into any U.S. embargoed countries or (b) to anyone on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals or the U.S. Department of Commerce Denied Person’s List or Entity List. By using the Apple Software, you represent and warrant that you are not located in any such country or on any such list. You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.”

… well I, for one, am very pleased to hear that Apple denies evil empires the opportunity to use it’s music store for the development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Makes perfect sense to me. No smart thinking would-be-terrorist would deem to mess with US contract law, right? And this explains why there are no iTunes stores in North Korea and Iran. But I remain oblivious to what iTunes contains that Apple worries could be used for nefarious purposes — other than some of the mind numbing, twisted music that would have many a parent contemplate filicide (which excusable acts I might have preferred the terms of service indemnified us against).

Heads up iPhone application developers: Could those location aware “I parked my car here” applications be strapped to incoming missiles and might you fall foul of the export restrictions if you sell such apps abroad?

UPDATE: I’ve trawled instructables.com and am not finding much in the way of how to weaponise my iTunes account. Post links in comments if you come across any.

UPDATE 2: There’s been a sudden spike of interest in this post. I suspect that a Carnivore like surveillance program has sniffed out some of this article’s suspicious key words and meta data — but I guess it would be expecting too much that they browse around and pump up the hits on my many other posts and pages, right?