[iDB doesnotcondone app piracy.]
Have you ever been inside a peddler’s mall? It’s basically a huge consignment shop where different vendors come and sell their knick knacks under one roof.
People who have items to sell in a peddler’s mall pay the mall’s owner a percentage of their sales for the rights to sell in the store. People will come to the peddler’s mall to see what kind of deals they can find and to barter with the sellers.
In a way, the peddler’s mall is a lot like the App Store. And folks, people are shoplifting.
Before I go any farther, I want to clearly definepiracy. The term “piracy” obviously tems from the wordpirate. Thanks to pop culture, the word “pirate” automatically triggers images of Jack Sparrow, missing teeth, parrots, gold, giant ships, swords, etc. But pirates have actually been around a lot longer than you would think.
From as early as 13th century B.C, the “Sea Peoples” raided the eastern Mediterranean coast. In fact, every since nautical exploration began, you may bet your best gold piece that there has been pirates.
Pirates have always beenplunderers and thievesthat run from the law, and only until recently has the term “pirate” taken on a whole other nature.
There’s been a rapidly growing trend inmobile app piracy. Thanks to the ease of access that is currently present for piracy on iOS, the iPhone is by far the largest and most blatantly obvious mobile piracy platform in existence.
Software piracycan be boiled down to this simple definition:acquiring paid software and using it for free without the developer’s consent.
There are two types of iOS app piracy:
App Store Piracy
If you take ten randomjailbrokeniPhones from ten random people, chances are that at least seven of the devices will have an app calledInstallous. Once you jailbreak your device, you can install a new portal to the App Store calledInstallous. The Installous application is a creation of the Hackulo.us team, and has been around since 2008.
Installous provides you withcracked copies of the apps in the App Store. Hackers upload cracked apps to be shared and indexed within the Installous app. Unlike the App Store, no account or payment method is required to have free access to the multitude of cracked apps on Installous.
The App Store is home to the world’s largest and most diverse collection of mobile applications. Because it is so easy to download free apps through Installous on a jailbroken device,App Store piracy runs rampant among the jailbreak community.
Cydia Piracy
Cydia indexes all of its jailbreak tweaks/apps/themes, etc. throughrepositories. A repository, or “repo,” is essentially a storage house for content that’s delivered by Cydia.
The software piracy communitycracks and distributes Cydia content through repos. Cydia apps/tweaks that developers submit to credible repos likeBigBossget cracked and re-hosted to be downloaded for free by repos like SiNfuL iPhone Repo and xSellize.
The creator of Cydia,saurik, has clearly stated on multiple occasions that he doesnot condone app piracy. But because Cydia is an open market for anyone to host their content, there’s nothing he can really do about the repos distributing cracked apps.
Now, back to the peddler’s mall.
A peddler’s mall is similar to the App (and Cydia) Store in a lot of ways. Real people with real lives are selling goods to real people with real lives. It’s easy to forget that an actual person spent real work hours and physical resources on creating our favorite apps. The developers behind the apps you use have to feed their families and pay for living expenses just like you do. The only difference is that, for a lot of them,software development is their only source of income.
I don’t want to get into too much of an emotionally driven argument, but it’s simple if you think about it in real world terms. In a peddler’s mall,it’s pretty easy to shoplift. The facility is usually not that hi tech, and there’s no door alarm to warn the employees when un-purchased goods walk out the front door. There’s usually not even security cameras to catch you pocketing something.
Even if you planned on only testing something out and then bringing it back, you hopefullywouldn’t shoplift from a peddler’s mall. Society and the law have ingrained into our minds that physical stealing is wrong, and, for the most part, we wouldn’t consider shoplifting from a real world store.
Why do we treat a virtual store differently? Just because something ispossibledoesn’t make itpermissible.
My argument is thatthe App and Cydia Store should be treated no differently than a physical store. When you pirate an app, you are directly slapping the app’s developer in the face for his/her hard work. That sounds tough, but it’s true.
There are three types of people that pirate apps:
There are two reasons why app piracy exists:
There’s not much that can be done about cheap people, but Apple and saurik have the ability to help solve number 2.
Developers have been experimenting with “free” and “lite” versions of apps to solve the problem ofno universal demo abilityin the App Store. Due to Apple’s current restrictions, there is no default method for offering demos/trails of apps.
Instead, developers are creating stand-alone companions to their full version apps. Especially in the gaming genre, you can find simpler versions of popular games for free and then buy the full version at the paid price.
If Apple could find a way toimplement a demo infrastructure into the App Store, it would cut out the segment of people that use methods like Installous to “test” out apps. Even if you do set out with good intentions, it’s easy to forget that your new favorite app wasstolen. You can end up never actually buying the app.
On the Cydia side of things, it gets more tricky. Because of the complexity in content and distribution, it would be a technical feat of magic to have universal demo capability on the Cydia storefront.
Developers could start offering “lite” versions of their apps and tweaks for people to try, but then there’s the issue of too much clutter and confusion. There would also be a problem with apps/tweaks that run at the root level (and many do).
My request is for Apple to create a demo feature in the App Store.It doesn’t have to be anything fancy; just an option under the “Buy” button to “Try.” This type of feature would solve the clutter issue of “lite” and “free” versions of the same app, and also provide no excuse for those who pirate apps for trial’s sake.
The bottom line is:don’t steal apps. You may think you’re just one fish in a big pond, but it all adds up.
And if you’re going to stick to the “try it before you buy it” mentality, make sure to follow through and actually buy apps you want to keep.
If you’re going to spend $200 on an iPhone, the least you can do is spend $1.99 for a great piece of software.That’s the price of a coffee.
