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Want to legitimize my pirated apps, best way to do it?

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hafr said:
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True. What would a better choice of word be, fraud?
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Piracy works for me.

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psonice said:
I agree with most of that. Take a read through any of the music / film industry anti-piracy reports and you'll see plenty of "1m pirated copies downloaded, $10 per copy, therefore $10m lost" BS. In reality maybe 10% of those million downloaders went on to buy the film. Maybe the other 90% wouldn't have watched it if they had to pay, and maybe they went around telling their friends how great it was and their friends all bought a copy. There's very little research on that.

What I can say though (not from evidence, but from seeing the effect piracy can have on companies over quite a few years) is this: It just comes down to how easy it is. If piracy is too easy lots of people choose to pirate, sales fall, and companies go bust or fire staff. If piracy is hard, lots of people simply won't bother. I mean would you work for 1 hour to get an app installed if it only cost $1 on the app store? Few would.
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I agree on all of that.

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Gutwrench said:
So op when you want some fruit do you just waltz into the market and shoplift some bananas and oranges, then pay for them later IF you thought they were tasty? How about someone breaks into your home and steals some of your things then later sends you some money IF they feel like it but only for the stuff they like.

You owe the developer money for every app you pirated, not only the apps you like.
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You still don't get it do you. When you shoplift or burgle a house then you are taking something away. If you use piracy to evaluate someone and see if you want to buy it then you havent taken anything away from anyone. Possibly you'll wind up not paying for something that you would have paid for otherwise. Possibly you'll wind up paying for something that you wouldn't have tried, but either way it's a different thing to stealing.

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Gutwrench said:
A few examples of a theft of service would be this: I run an extension cord from an exterior outlet of your home and power my tv, or I tap into telephone service from an exterior junction box on your house. Another common example is a contractor who dumps their debris into the dumpster of a grocery store. The dumpster owner is paying for the service not the contractor...this is theft despite the contractor not carrying "something" away.

Your mipoc view may not agree that piracy is a category of theft but it is.
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Neither of those is the same as piracy as both of those directly cost someone money. Piracy only costs the developers money. If you're pirating an app that you would have bought. Pirating an app that you'd never have bought doesn't cost anyone anything.
 
dancj said:
...You still don't get it do you. When you shoplift or burgle a house then you are taking something away. If you use piracy to evaluate someone and see if you want to buy it then you havent taken anything away from anyone. Possibly you'll wind up not paying for something that you would have paid for otherwise. Possibly you'll wind up paying for something that you wouldn't have tried, but either way it's a different thing to stealing.
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Did you actually just use the word "piracy" in the same sentence as "not having taken something away"? So the word pirate just means to sample something? So pirates weren't people who "stole" from people, they just borrowed stuff from people to see if they liked it?

So if I "pirate" your car for a joyride, then bring it back and go buy my own, it's perfectly fine, right? Cool!
 
dancj said:
When you shoplift or burgle a house then you are taking something away. If you use piracy to evaluate someone and see if you want to buy it then you havent taken anything away from anyone. Possibly you'll wind up not paying for something that you would have paid for otherwise. Possibly you'll wind up paying for something that you wouldn't have tried, but either way it's a different thing to stealing.
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What if the law says otherwise? If by law such activity (download, try, then delete if not satisfied) counts as theft, then theft it is from a legal point of view. Mixing this up with ethics and morals is hopeless, and it's naive to believe that the law conforms with what's morally right at any given time.
 
Arhhhh!

Are you dorks still whining about pirates? What do we call it when a dev creates an app, misleads you in the description, has their punk friends and family write great reviews, then takes your money?

Let's argue the legality of that?

Btw, Arhhhh!!! Just previewed another app for free!
 
TheWheelMan said:
Did you actually just use the word "piracy" in the same sentence as "not having taken something away"? So the word pirate just means to sample something? So pirates weren't people who "stole" from people, they just borrowed stuff from people to see if they liked it?

So if I "pirate" your car for a joyride, then bring it back and go buy my own, it's perfectly fine, right? Cool!
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Frankly, I wouldn't mind if you made a copy or a clone of my car, then made up your mind later if you should pay money to BMW or not. Maybe BMW would mind, but then again, they would probably let you take one of their products for a test drive first, as opposed to many software devs.

This is not about pirates on the sea. When "piracy" is being used in this context, it refers to copyright infringement of digital media. Equating copyright infringement with violent deprecation on grounds of similar spelling is hard to take seriously, especially when there's such an obvious semantic difference.
 
Jessemtz25 said:
Well first and most importantly you can stop basically being a thief.
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He's offering to pay for the apps. We all know piracy is wrong. We've beat the guy up for 5 pages now. Enough already. I'm quite sure we've all done stuff we regret.
 
Originally Posted by Gutwrench
So op when you want some fruit do you just waltz into the market and shoplift some bananas and oranges, then pay for them later IF you thought they were tasty? How about someone breaks into your home and steals some of your things then later sends you some money IF they feel like it but only for the stuff they like.
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A proper comparison would be if I would steal your car, but I would leave an exact same copy of it. Would that be stealing?
 
shinobi-81 said:
Frankly, I wouldn't mind if you made a copy or a clone of my car, then made up your mind later if you should pay money to BMW or not. Maybe BMW would mind, but then again, they would probably let you take one of their products for a test drive first, as opposed to many software devs.

This is not about pirates on the sea. When "piracy" is being used in this context, it refers to copyright infringement of digital media. Equating copyright infringement with violent deprecation on grounds of similar spelling is hard to take seriously, especially when there's such an obvious semantic difference.
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You mean as hard to take seriously as some of the arguments why piracy (spelled "theft", "fraud," etc.) is not a criminal act and no big deal?
 
TheWheelMan said:
You mean as hard to take seriously as some of the arguments why piracy (spelled "theft", "fraud," etc.) is not a criminal act and no big deal?
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Oh, not at all. Don't mix the other arguments into this, I'm talking about the one you wrote, which really stands out here. You're entering a slippery slope, because what if the MPAA had arbitrarily used the label "murder" instead of "piracy"?

Of course this doesn't mean that software piracy isn't a big thing. But since it's copyright infringement (or EULA violation at most), it should be treated as such. Comparing it with whatever the opposite side decides to call it, seems too unreasonable to take into consideration, even.

FTR: I'm against software piracy, but I do not consider try-before-you-buy to be piracy, theft, fraud, etc when it comes to software.
 
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Most people wouldn't consider walking into Best Buy and stealing boxed software off the shelf, but a few people here feel making unauthorized duplication of software from the Internet perfectly acceptable. I guess people will go to any extreme to justify their behavior and employ blame avoidance. I see it as a character flaw, plain and simple.
 
TheWheelMan said:
Did you actually just use the word "piracy" in the same sentence as "not having taken something away"? So the word pirate just means to sample something? So pirates weren't people who "stole" from people, they just borrowed stuff from people to see if they liked it?

So if I "pirate" your car for a joyride, then bring it back and go buy my own, it's perfectly fine, right? Cool!
Click to expand...

There is absolutely a difference between digital software "piracy" and shoplifting. The both the law and society as a whole regards them as different.

If I steal some guy's car, then I have deprived him of its use -- that has an immediate and direct consequence for the owner. I've taken it from him and now he has no car to drive.

However, if I rip a few songs off his CD. I have not deprived him of any property. The guy still has his CD. Instead, I made an unauthorized copy that may or may have been a lost sale to the copyright owner (we'd never know). This is copyright infringement, not theft.

This idea of the two being the same comes straight from the industry lobbies; the law sees a definite distinction between the two. That said, I do think that software piracy is wrong and it hurts the industry. I just also think that calling it theft is disingenuous.
 
Gutwrench said:
Most people wouldn't consider walking into Best Buy and stealing boxed software off the shelf, but a few people here feel making unauthorized duplication of software from the Internet perfectly acceptable. I guess people will go to any extreme to justify their behavior and employ blame avoidance. I see it as a character flaw, plain and simple.
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Most people have enough sense to realize that comparing stealing anything from Best Buy to copyright infringement is ridiculous. Most people don't jump to the conclusion that because someone does not agree that copyright infringement is akin to physical theft that they are defending copyright infringement. It's twisted logic. I see it as a character flaw, plain and simple.





Michael
 
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Gutwrench said:
Most people wouldn't consider walking into Best Buy and stealing boxed software off the shelf, but a few people here feel making unauthorized duplication of software from the Internet perfectly acceptable. I guess people will go to any extreme to justify their behavior and employ blame avoidance. I see it as a character flaw, plain and simple.
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You're the one who must prove to the rest of us (or "justify") that unauthorised duplication is equal to theft. This far, you have provided circular arguments in the lines of "it's theft because it's theft because it's theft because it's comparable with shoplifting" and I'm therefore still not convinced. It's never perfectly acceptable to violate copyrights or EULAs, but under the circumstances at hand, it's far from theft. If I were a dev, I wouldn't have any problems with such activity if the purpose was try-before-buy.
 
Actually, I think someone needs to prove that piracy doesn't hurt the creator of the content, which it damn well does. You few "virtuous" sorts who are merely "trying before buying" are the exception, not the rule. While I totally agree that there should be a legitimate way to try every app before you buy it, piracy IS illegal, irregardless of how you want to think of it, and it does have repercussions for the creator, especially the indie/small company creators whose income is limited to begin with.
 
First of all, you don't need to do anything. Apps that you haven't actually purchased do not stay in your purchased list. When you Restore your phone or "un-jailbreak" it... only the apps you legitimately purchased will be in your list. For any apps that you actually like and want to purchase based on past pirating experiences, feel free to do so. No harm done and you'll get updates to the apps like nothing ever happened. You're good to go whenever, man.

Also, if you delete a pirated app while still jailbroken, simply go to the App Store and purchase it. The legitimate version can then be downloaded whether your phone is jailbroken or not.
 
I want same way, before ive used pirated apps, but i went on back on legal way when i bought the new iPad. So i've pirated apps and its not a big deal for me. Im just happy that i dont need to do it anymore. Lets not scare children with it.

First of all, piracy IS NOT stealing. Its just breaking terms of agreement or contract with developer. Maybe it can be bad for developer business, maybe it is immoral, but still proper place for piracy is in civil law, not criminal law.

But is it really bad for everyone? I know two categories of people who pirate applications for iOS.
1. People who want to try application before buying it
2. People who cannot afford buying applications.

Because first group developers lose money, especially those developers who make frauds or cheat buyers. But on the other hand this group forces developers to make better quality applications, and to make bugfixes after release. So developers lose some money (which developers? usually those who wanted to steal from users, but never mind...), but whole community gains on a quality, and the more it has, the more users is comming to it, and developers actually get more revenue in the long term.

Second group is much simpler. Users who cannot afford buying apps, will not buy them even if they wouldnt pirate them. They woulnd spent any money on them, because they _dont have_ those money. Of course its still immoral to pirate applications, but devs dont lose any money, even potential one. Things get different when it comes to more expensive apps for OSX - usually costing more than dozen quids. Then people have choice - buy app, or pirate app and go to pub, they often chose second option and devs actually lose potential money. But when it comes to pirating apps for one or two quids, it is usually choice between app and loaf of bread.
 
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I just wanna come in and give support to the OP, as the amount of flack you've received is way of base. If I read correctly, he's not doing it anymore - so people should just get a grip.

Back to the more technical issues, you should do what I did when going through the same 'transition'. Log every app you have/want to keep in http://appshopper.com/ wish list.

then delete everything from your phone. And rather than buying everything in one go (if you don't need to), just buy them when they go on sale etc.
 
Gutwrench said:
Most people wouldn't consider walking into Best Buy and stealing boxed software off the shelf, but a few people here feel making unauthorized duplication of software from the Internet perfectly acceptable. I guess people will go to any extreme to justify their behavior and employ blame avoidance. I see it as a character flaw, plain and simple.
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From another thread in which the original poster suggested sharing an apple ID with his GF for fiscle reasons.....

Gutwrench said:
My wife, daughter, and I do exact that.
We all have distinct Apple IDs and iCloud accounts but all use a common Apple ID for iTunes and the App Store. (We've used the common ID for years.)

I think you'll have a small bump when your gf changes her Apple ID to yours. I believe the moment she does this she won't be able to re-d/l any of her music or Apps tied to her Apple ID for 90 days.
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Well there's two copies of each application that you and your morals won't be paying for! :D
 
There's nothing illegal or immoral about a family sharing an Apple ID. Actually Apple is who recommended this to us. You're trying too hard, but go ahead, try again.
 
Gutwrench said:
There's nothing illegal or immoral about a family sharing an Apple ID. Actually Apple is who recommended this to us. You're trying too hard, but go ahead, try again.
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Okay. If you can point this out on Apples TOS or webiste, or anywhere offically from Apple in fact, then you'll have me on that one....

Fact is you're paying once and using 3 times.
 
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