Extremely good news for developers, although I'm sure the effect will be short-lived as users find other ways of pirating apps.
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Hackulous Shuts Down, Taking Down Popular Pirated App Source Installous
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It wasn't intentional, but there haven't been any updates to my app since the day it got posted on the pirate sites. The significant downdraft in sales really just removes the desire to update the app. Still plan to, but certainly it's a lower priority.
Pirated apps don't just hurt the developers, they hurt the legitimate users as well.
When an App's sales are borderline, a developer has to decide whether he should spend time updating an app for his existing users (who have already paid) or whether that time would be better invested in putting out a new app (which hopefully will be more economically viable.)
The hacking scene has had a real impact on this.
In fact, it also has us considering other business models-- for instance, app subscriptions where customers pay us every month. Then it doesn't matter if they got the app from the appstore or not- the real value lives on the server, and if they haven't paid, they won't have access to it. (The app itself would be free.)
I don't like this model, but jailbreaking is forcing us into it.
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The idea that "rivalrous" is relevant to the issue is a false one. People who want to believe that they can steal other people's labor, made up this idea that "rivalrous" was necessary for something to be "property". It is a post-hoc ergo propter-hoc fallacy.
The reality is, just as you don't have the right to make someone dig a ditch for you at gunpoint, you don't have the right to steal the effort of a software developer via theft.
It's the labor you are stealing. Whether that labor is transmitted via physical property, currency, or not is irrelevant.
Uh, no. You might get canned for no reason but you still get paid for the time you worked. And more importantly, you willingly entered into the agreement with full knowledge that the stay is not guaranteed. Those people ripping off developers are not honoring any terms other than the ones they set themselves. It's not a two way agreement.
I have to say, this is the most spectacular rationalization of slavery I've ever seen. First "I didn't steal it from the person who produced the labor", then "I didn't hurt anyone" (pretending like economics doesn't exist)....
...but the coup de grace, of course, is equating THEFT with ESCAPING EAST GERMANY BY CROSSING THE BERLIN WALL!
Man, denial ain't just a river in egypt!
But you ARE taking it from a person, you just choose to ignore it. Just because you can't see the person, or because you think they have too much already, or whatever your rational changes NOTHING.
And your "they'll never catch me" attitude is the same attitude EVERYONE I have defended over the years has had up until the moment they get CAUGHT. No one ever thinks they're on the radar until they get served with a $3500 copyright infringement lawsuit and then all of a sudden they're calling my firm for a way out...
And you'd prefer free things vs. having to pay? Really? Wow... Would you prefer to have a nicer car? Why not go take one?
Because you think you might get caught. After all, it's just a big bad car dealership and they have insurance right? No one would be hurt...
Just because you don't fear getting caught being a pirate (as misinformed as that is), doesn't make you any less of a thief.
And no, I would NOT rather steal things vs. pay for them. If someone said "you can have this for free OR pay for it" and I couldn't afford it, that would be different, but that's NOT what's happening with your theft. You don't "want" to pay, so you don't... screw the developers and their "prices".
A biggger dog will come for you one day. Then you'll be paying my legal fees trying to argue that you didn't know what you were doing was wrong. It's as funny and ridiculous to hear it in court as it is to hear it on a forum, just in case you wondered....
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Actually, this isn't true. Those who are engaging in piracy on iOS devices are violating a contract they voluntarily entered. This is a violation of the Apple iOS ToS and the iTunes ToS, both of which are contracts they agreed to in the process of acquiring and setting up their iOS device, and both of which they are violating by jailbreaking and installing pirated apps.
One can argue about the morality of jailbreaking, but not piracy, and you can't claim that either aren't a violation of a contract that the pirates voluntarily entered into.
Give me the function of SBSettings, and I will not miss Jailbreak, and upgrade to iOS6!
Got a question here, one I'm kinda gonna present as an argument, but you still might be able to answer since you're speaking from an informed position.
Okay, you say the day it got posted to the warez repos, you saw a huge drop in sales, right? Was it actually a huge drop that corresponded to that, or were your sales already starting to level out and decline a bit beforehand?
The reason I ask is because only a small percentage of iOS users jailbreak their phones, and not all jailbreakers pirate apps. Anyone running iOS 6, which is supposedly the majority of what iDevice users are running at the moment, can't jailbreak and pirate apps at all. So how do you know your sales decline was directly related to piracy?
Everyone here seen the movie "Trading Places"? These pirate arguments remind me of that movie.
In the movie people are trying to steal the federal government's crop report so they can position themselves in orange juice futures before the report is made public and the market moves.
They are stealing information. And all the rationalizations for stealing software are applicable to this insider trading situation.
The "crop report" is "non rivalous", they just got a copy of it, so the government still had the copy. Therefore stealing that info is not wrong?
Secondly, they just made bets on the stock market, so nobody was hurt, right? The people on the other side of the trade were never the wiser, so they weren't hurt, right?
I guess insider trading on stolen information is moral, right? Cause that information isn't "property" (for their redefinition of property.)
In the movie people are trying to steal the federal government's crop report so they can position themselves in orange juice futures before the report is made public and the market moves.
They are stealing information. And all the rationalizations for stealing software are applicable to this insider trading situation.
The "crop report" is "non rivalous", they just got a copy of it, so the government still had the copy. Therefore stealing that info is not wrong?
Secondly, they just made bets on the stock market, so nobody was hurt, right? The people on the other side of the trade were never the wiser, so they weren't hurt, right?
I guess insider trading on stolen information is moral, right? Cause that information isn't "property" (for their redefinition of property.)
Okay. But...
If the end of jailbreak is really coming, then Apple needs to advance iOS to the point where jailbreaking would be useless anyway. For example, consider SBSettings. People want a faster way to turn on/off settings such as Wifi, 3G, etc. and it is a big reason to jailbreak. If Apple actually provided this in iOS, there would be less of a reason to jailbreak. Similarly, if the other things (such as a much improved app switcher) were implemented see where I'm going with this?
If the end of jailbreak is really coming, then Apple needs to advance iOS to the point where jailbreaking would be useless anyway. For example, consider SBSettings. People want a faster way to turn on/off settings such as Wifi, 3G, etc. and it is a big reason to jailbreak. If Apple actually provided this in iOS, there would be less of a reason to jailbreak. Similarly, if the other things (such as a much improved app switcher) were implemented see where I'm going with this?
The AppStore sales are noisy enough that you have periodic bad days, but a whole week was down so much that I was confused.
I had no expectation that our app would be pirated. So, when sales were down so significantly, I went to look at our metrics we collect. According to the metrics, we had a really banner week that week. Our "New Installs" (eg: people who ran the app the first time on a new device) was thru the roof. Normally this would be great news, but the financial reports were going the other way.
I really started to be concerned. I wondered if Apple was simply not reporting sales (or was having a problem with their accounting.)
I actually entertained the notion that Apple might be ripping us off (for a few seconds.)
I was quite perplexed. But then I dug into the metrics and noticed that the number of fresh installs on jailbroken devices was up dramatically. And I mean, sharply. One day it was fixed low percentage, and the next new installs on jailbroken devices was %90 of our installs.
I thought that was perplexing as well. I wasn't really thinking that it had been pirated... but I wondered if we had gotten some press in a country where a lot of the people jailbreak.
So I googled for the company and app name, and that's when I found that we'd been pirated. I found our Apple posted to several iOS warez sites that came up on google simultaneously.
Sure enough, the dates matched.
Our sales have never recovered.
This was pre-iOS 6 and the timing lines up, to the *hour*. Apple gives us daily sales stats, but we have new-install stats down to the hour. The jailbreak stat is collected at the same resolution. Now it wasn't instantaneous, the first hour the pirated app was out things hadn't moved much, but starting with that hour and over the next several days, the two figures diverged strongly.
I'd *LOVE* it if Apple made the AppStore not work on jailbroken devices. Then we could just make our app not work on jailbroken devices. But since apple lets people legitimately buy our app on jailbroken devices I can't use the fact that the device is jailbroken as a way to know whether it is pirated or not.
Did you copy that verbatim from somewhere? That makes me sick. And they justify their actions saying that the product is not "tangible", it's digital so making a copy costs the developers nothing. Flip the table around and they would be singing a different tune.
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If the end of jailbreak is really coming, then Apple needs to advance iOS to the point where jailbreaking would be useless anyway. For example, consider SBSettings. People want a faster way to turn on/off settings such as Wifi, 3G, etc. and it is a big reason to jailbreak. If Apple actually provided this in iOS, there would be less of a reason to jailbreak. Similarly, if the other things (such as a much improved app switcher) were implemented see where I'm going with this?
So you want everything right now, or it's "screw Apple and the developers", is that right? Interesting. Yes, a community-driven platform would be nice, but that's not how iOS is designed, not at the lower levels at least.
People "wanting" and what's best for the overall user base are two different things and it's Apple's responsibility to look out for the greater good, and of course their bottom line.
Apple has feedback channels in place - tell them what you want to see, legitimately. www.apple.com/feedback
I won't miss this much. I never used these anyway. The only thing I do via jailbreaking is little things like f.lux, having my keyboard show the current case of the letters, SBSettings, and having my folders close automatically when an app is launched.
That's the kind of thing people should do with jailbreaking, not pirating apps. If you can afford an iPhone/iPad, you can afford apps.
That's the kind of thing people should do with jailbreaking, not pirating apps. If you can afford an iPhone/iPad, you can afford apps.
I hope this doesn't stop the jailbreak dev teams from creating/finding JBs. Unfortunately, too many people associate JB with piracy, so theres a negative connotation surrounding it. But there are certain tweaks that make the iPhone so much more efficient and capable, beyond the theming and piracy (ifile -which I use daily-, sbsettings/ncsettings, vlc player -for playing everything the stock software can't-, springtomize... just to name a few). Apple has added a lot of features recently, this is true, but stock iOS is nowhere near its ideal potential.
Your hilarious. What do you think im using BitTorrent or something where i can have my IP traced to me? Do you think i use unencrypted connections? Ive been taking it all for a very long time. What exactly am i stealing? Magnetically imprinted, binary zeros and ones? To equate it to stealing a car, of physical property, is totally off base. No, its not the same. Of course i wouldnt steal a car. But how can i steal what isnt there? I bought the computer, why am i not allowed to put on it or do with it whatever i want? Again, you don't want me to take your music, software, movies, porn? Build a better mouse trap.
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If you actually believe half of what you've written, you're a sad, sad example of a human being.
Firstly, the law is the law and should be followed, period.
Secondly, there is no talk of "catching up" - the law is deliberately as such in the jurisdictions referred to above, usually following extensive civil debate; such understanding will probably be even further extended in many countries where an extension of personal use and fair use concepts is expected to be adopted.
And please don't even start with fallacious and/or puritan "this is immoral" arguments, which depend on each society's concept of what is right or wrong...you may think like in the US, similarly to your unconditional support of Israel when virtually everyone else differs; so yes, a whole bunch of other countries may and do think differently.
Of course i don't. But i was making an example of all your preachers on here, telling the world how things should be. Look if you don't agree with something, thats fine. But to sit here and condem people as immoral, unethical, horrendous individuals for a choice they made or make, well you know the saying "Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone..."
I do not need a bunch of self-righteous people telling me what is right and wrong, what i can and cannot do, just like i don't need a fairy-tail (called religion aka the magic man in the sky) to tell me what is right and wrong.
EDIT - And i have not seen one response that stated "I dont agree but thats your decision to make, you have to live by the consequences of your own actions." That would have been an appropriate, respected response.
It is immoral. Just like slavery was immoral 400 years before it was illegal in the US. "Jurisdictions' can be wrong for a long time, sometimes hundreds of years before they catch up. That's exactly what's going on here.
This is not a "fair use" argument. This is some scumbags deciding that they don't want to pay the price for a product, and stealing it. Simple as that.
I assume your handle indicates that you a JD. I work with lawyers, and I know that, often times the job of a lawyer is to muddy up a clear cut issue.
Those of you who are saying good riddance really need to get off your high horses. You think because you pay $1 for an application that it makes you better than those people who don't. I don't have a jailbroken phone at the moment but I contend to the rest of you that there is no reason to be bitter towards something that effects you in no way. You enjoy paying money for apps? Good for you. You want to pirate them? Go for it. Neither group is better than the other. In the end we are just a bunch of idiots who paid $200+ for a PHONE. Get over yourselves. Don't act like you have never downloaded mp3's from the Internet. We all starting doing that when Napster came out back in the day. It's the exact same thing.
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There is one important point that makes piracy even worse for the little guy: There are plenty of people out there who cannot justify paying the money that Adobe charges. You would expect these people to just spend less money on cheaper software. If they instead use a pirated copy of Adobe's software, the little guy is the one that hurts. So there are plenty of people with stolen Adobe software who would have never bought it, but who would have bought someone else's cheaper software if they were not thieves.
Horrible argument. The person who illegally downloads adobe obviously prefers it due to its many features, which means if he SETTLES for the little guys software, he is getting something he doesn't want and can't utilize to the same effect as adobe. Your high horse...please jump off it.
Replace "pirate it" with "not buy it" above and you have a decent human being, whom I'm happy to share the planet with. Keep it as "pirate it" and you have an *******.
I'm all for trying apps before buying and I want that to improve, but I'm not gonna do something to violate other people's hard efforts. It's called having perspective. I'm not even rich.
When i was younger, I had an iPod Touch. I jailbreaked it and never bought an app. Now I'm too lazy to find apps by other means or deal with licensing issues and its a few bucks I would have spent on a burger. A couple hundred dollars is what a blew on apps this year. Cheers to next year!