A developer has pulled his popular "Uploader for Instagram" app from the Mac App Store after Instagram sent him two demand letters.

Last month, Caleb Benn, a 17-year-old Los Angeles high school student, released the $5 Mac desktop app that allowed users to upload photos to their Instagram accounts.

Instagram had originally sent a letter to Benn on March 28, telling him that his app had violated the company's Terms of Service. The letter stated that Benn had until March 30 to "fix things." But after the deadline passed, the app was still available and Instagram had not taken any further action.

Benn texted Ars on Saturday morning, after this story was originally published, to say that he had received another demand e-mail from Instagram and removed his app from the App Store.

"I pulled the app at midnight," he said. "It was a tough thing to do, but. I just couldn’t risk being blacklisted from using anything Facebook/Instagram nor a lawsuit for that matter. Especially when I’m so close to enrolling in college."

Benn made "around $6,000" in revenue from the app, which he says will go towards his college fund—he’s already been accepted to the University of California Berkeley, and hopes to study computer science. He originally created the app after he saw a need to upload photos to Instagram from a desktop computer, rather than a phone.

"I'm lead social media in my student government, and I take a lot of pictures, and then I'd have to email them to my phone and it was a tedious process and then I could make this, and then i realized there could be high demand for this." Benn told Ars. "There are 15 Instagram apps on the App Store, and none of them have upload capability."

Instagram has not responded to Ars’ request for comment.

A check of a federal court database shows that no lawsuits have been filed against Benn nor against his company, Anobot LLC.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s "Coders’ Rights Project" suggests that Benn was probably within his legal rights to create the app.

"According Instagram’s website, reverse engineering the API is indeed a violation of the terms of use," Corynne McSherry, the legal director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars in an e-mail. "That said, the general terms of use refer in turn to an API 'license.' Whether or not an API is copyrightable expression as opposed to a method of operation, is by no means a settled question."

"It's shameful that Instagram is trying to use its its terms of service to impede users’ fair use rights and stifle add-on innovation," she added.

Previously, Benn said he had made a few thousand dollars on another app, a guide to the game Temple Run—before being forced to shut it down.

"I'm enrolled part time in college, and I have a ton of AP classes, and I've been reading Supreme Court briefs and stuff and educating myself in the law—it is a grey area," he said. "I would expect something from them."