The only way to stop piracy is for Apple to work harder to stop the jailbreakers. I know jailbreaking isn't bad, but having root access to the system means you can reverse engineer any protection they put on it.
Apple should go after the pirates. I put an update out for Hexius yesterday that was cracked by this evening. It didn't rake me long to find out where the crack came from as the filename had the username and forum address of the cracker in it! I went to look at the site, and they are offering hundreds of cracked apps - they even have a Twitter feed. It shouldn't be too hard to locate and prosecute these people. Anyway, I have some measures that I can activate at any time to make people using the cracked version look stupid, but it wouldn't take them long to hack it out.
Stick Skater has some detection thing for pirated copies, I tried to try it before I bought it (for the record I am now unjailbroke) and it wouldn't let me... but I have Stick Skater now anyway.
The only way to stop piracy is to: 1) make quality products that are worth buying over others. 2) fix all of our socio-economic problems. That's really all that there is to it.
I hear this "excuse" about 20x every given day "Well I only pirate programs so that I can learn on them, when I start making money off of them I make sure I purchase them" Now to me, this makes sense (I am not admitting to anything nor, am I suggesting that I have pirated programs and apps (I have not)), if your gonna make money off of using a program then by all means you should pay for it, but to use it for training I think is a valid argument. Granted, its still pirating but to me the above excuse is a sort of gray area. Now pirating games and movies and music is, without a doubt, %100 pirating and theres nothing one can say to defend that. But come on, who here hasn't used torrents or something to get their favorite artisits new CD? Or illegaly downloaded Lady Gaga's new hot song (Again not insinuating or implying that I have stolen anything). There are gray areas in the issue of pirating and unfortunatley it will never stop.
I fail to see the grey area personally... if the product is available for sale and you obtain the product by other illegal means then you are a pirate. Regardless of how you intend to use the product. That's not grey, that's black and white.
Black and white in the legal definition...but not necessarily in the moral or ideological. People have lots of different views on intellectual property, many of which disagree with the current "rules". Just because they are the rules doesn't mean they are right. Or that they should be followed.
Now im not arguing in favor of piracy im just saying, that, to me, and i know this seems wrong, the training argument may have some validity to it. Your not making money of off the program, its still piracy and im not debating that, but it seems like "Morally" like sky muffin put, it holds some water so to speak.
Bull. Many people use Photoshop and never make money off of it. Same goes with tons of other software. Should they get it for free? When it comes to piracy, there is no "moral" or "idealogical" argument...unless you are a pirate. Those are the excuses they use. It is a legal issue. To those of us who develop software, you are a thief. No grey area. Now, to answer the OP on what to do about piracy...I personally try to ignore it. If Adobe and all the big corporations can't stop it, it isn't worth a moment of my time in worrying about it.
That's where you are wrong. Many people, myself included, have much looser views of intellectual property. There are some pretty interesting reasons for it too- reasons which are hardly excuses, but rather, reflective of lifestyles and yes, ideologies and beliefs. Just an example- (I do multiple forms of art but let's just take writing as an example), I don't believe that my art belongs completely to me. In increasing extremes: 1) Once I release a work, anyone who consumes that media can interpret it in any number of ways. Therefore, my art is literally beyond my control after a certain point. 2) Once I release a work, anyone who consumes that media can REinterpret my ideas and put them into their own work. Therefore, my art can inspire others, or even morph and change (a la remixed and cover songs in music, or remixes under the Creative Commons License). Okay, here's the extreme one: 3) My art, as well as any form of art or information, can benefit, change, and influence someone else. Therefore, to keep my work under wraps is selfish. I'd rather have my work pirated and distributed to ten thousand people who don't pay me a single dime than have one hundred people pay me $1000 each. This is simply how I believe art should function. Other people I have met (including other artists) hold different views of this- some say that such a loose view makes my market share less unique (which is not exactly true since I don't release every single work to every person). Others say that they made the work, so why shouldn't they get the credit for it? And that's totally okay with me. Others still say that there are works of art with different values (some people would say, for example, that Miley Cyrus' music is not art. But others would disagree)...but I think that as long as there is even one person who can benefit from a work of art, then they should get that work of art, information, or whatever it is. So you see, there are definitely different extremes in how people can (and do) view art. This gets even more complicated when you go into information, programs with utility, and other things. People can hold different ideas for different categories of art/information, different quality, cost, etc. Also, before I forget- I don't believe that piracy is not theft, because it copies a work. And it is rarely ever an opportunity cost, because the people who pirate in the first place would not have paid for it anyway. There are even some studies which show that pirates purchase more media than other people, and others still that show that pirates can benefit industries through free advertising, word of mouth, and attending functions such as concerts, where more money goes directly to the artist. But that's a side note to the intellectual property thing. edit: One more thing related to theft- if someone steals my work by copying it and selling it as their own, now THAT is something we can all agree is a problem. To me, that isn't piracy, but plain theft. There's a clear opportunity cost and damage done to the artist.
Hmmm it seems my view is shifting.... and i have never pirated anything, all the apps and programs i have are purchased legitimatley.
I have no answer to or knowledge of the problem as a whole, but isn't the solution to replacing authentication functions to simply not make them functions? Include the authentication code in a function that is vital to the app and mix them together so it would be very hard to remove the authentication checks without breaking the app.
That certainly helps (it's what I do), but it only slows hackers down. You can intersperse checks throughout the code in multiple places too.
You could try. I remember putting all sorts of mad checks into the ST version of Powermonger (for example a disk protection was kicked off the first time the graphic engine had to render a captain sitting round a campfire). I met the guy who hacked the protection out at a computer show. He shook my hand and thanked me for the challenge. It had taken him six hours of painstaking vector patching with a debugger/disassembler instead of the more usual 15 minutes. I'm not sure how many extra sales that five hours and fortyfive minutes got us... That said, there isn't much actual hacking going on on the iPhone so the sort of protection you are talking about might work. These days it's mostly clueless arseholes like Mathboy buying a game on day one and running it through some freely available 'cracking' app. And yet these dickwits command as much respect from the freeloaders as the oldschool hackers did.
I've put protection in is purely for my own interest, and once I start pissing off people who are playing the 'cracked'/unencrypted version, I want to see if anyone has the know-how or inclination to take out my various tripwires. I'm sure there are plenty of people who could (it's not brain surgery), but iPhone hacking seems to mostly done through automated tools nowadays. BTW - I remember PowerMonger well (the Amiga version) - very good game! - wasn't that a successor to Populous?
I wrote a paper about this exact subject, and it is amazing what I discovered. I will accept that I am a thief and I won't even try to deny it. I am also a developer. Bill Gates admitted to watching copyrighted material on YouTube. He didn't attempt to make excuses, he simply acknowledged that this is how the world is today- it is gaining wide acceptance to the point that even the RICHEST MAN in the world didn't even think twice about it. Furthermore, Bill Gates admitted that piracy of Windows provided Microsoft with a market in China. Even with Microsofts vast resources, they could not buy their way into China, but piracy opened those doors for them, and they are able to sell the product in China. Steve Jobs has removed DRM from music in the App Store. In an open letter, he explains a very simple reason: DRM hasn't, and will very likely NEVER work. For the developers that blame piracy, you have found a convenient scapegoat for your lack of sales. Congratulations, you are now on tier with the MPAA, RIAA and BSA. Make all the claims you want regarding how piracy has affected your sales, but in the same breath you should admit failure to market your product effectively to your target audience. You have basically tailored your product to appeal to the pirates. Go ahead and claim a 90% piracy rate. If your numbers hold up, that would mean that 90% of all iDevices are jailbroken. Of course, 90% are NOT jailbroken, this means that you are missing your target audience by a wide margin. If you are nailing your target audience, you will see piracy rates floating around 5-10% (closer to the USA number of Jailbroken devices.) The GAO (Government Accountability Office), a branch of US Congress asked the MPAA to qualify their claims for lost sales. Not only did the MPAA NOT COMPLY, they couldn't comply. Their report wasn't rejected, it simply wasn't submitted. When Congress is interested in your pleas and asks for detailed reports, you better have something to submit. Now, I can go through and cite these sources and provide MORE information. But you (meaning anyone) better have a better reason for arguing with me than "boo hoo, affected sales, my hard work, waaa!". No one can refute the fact that piracy is bad for the economy. That isn't even a question. The real question should be "Piracy has affect commerce in a big way, how can we monetize this and will it be sustainable?" The arguments of piracy and copyright infringement go far beyond 1906 when Sousa filed a complaint. With over 100 years spanning that gap, The economy has not fallen apart, yet.
I'll claim 50% - mind you the update that allowed me to gather this information has only been out for 2 days I hope it drops - the pirates are playing it on droves now (about 370 new pirated installs occurred in the last hour and a half). Oh, and I agree that most of these aren't lost sales - maybe a few, but not most of them. They are really playing it though - the replay counts are great - I'm just hoping my marketing works out and payed users end up enjoying it as much.
There was a discussion about this six months ago and day 1 piracy rates were as high as 90%. Dropping to more like 10% after a week or two. This seems to suggest that the pirates have an awesome distribution network and predictably short attention spans.
