Users of the Beta iPhone 3.0 operating system have found that Apple plans to stop users from re-downloading applications they have purchased for free via the iPhone. That means that should you hand your iPhone to your four-year-old to play Lemonade Tycoon for the millionth time and she deletes your favorite app like Spore you can’t just re-download the app on the iPhone.

According to a screen shot posted up at The iPhone Blog your options are to wait until you get home and download the app for free on your computer or pay to purchase it again. This move by Apple isn’t to control bandwidth since you can reportedly still download free apps again from your PC.

Apparently with the new 3.0 firmware offering the ability to manage multiple iTunes accounts per device the change is to prevent sharing apps between accounts. If some fail safes weren’t in place you could just log into your pals iPhone and download the apps you bought free to his phone. I’m not sure that the change will be much of an issue for most users.

[via The iPhone Blog]