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Wow! 10M Pirated iPhone Apps Downloaded!

Z

Zippher

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 28, 2009
10
0
I doubt that figure.
That would mean, for instance, that there are 100,000 people who each have 100 pirated iPhone apps.

And the 100,000 figure is probably on the very high end of what the size of an iPhone pirating community is.

And it's realllllly stupid for them to be bragging about something like this, because they're incredibly easily trackable, and going to get the legal hammer thrown down on them soon.
Maybe they'll share a cell with the Pirate Bay guys.
 
You should contact whoever is hosting that site and try to get it shut down. I know, I'm probably naive to think something like that could work, but assume you charge 99 cents per app, that's a lotta money gone. This is even worse than people who think it's OK to just rip a movie or CD because you are in possession of it, nevermind copyright laws.
 
Close down a single cracked app site in the hope all the others will what? cave in to pressure and close their sites?
Why would 10M downloads be an unrealistic value? You have no proof to backup your statement that it couldn't be that high, remember these apps are free so people can download as many as they want. I for one have downloaded probably more than 100 because basically its free and most of the time i'm glad I didn't purchase them.
Maybe if apple offered money back if you uninstall after a certain time frame it would reduce pirating but i still highly doubt it.
 
kAoTiX said:
I for one have downloaded probably more than 100 because basically its free and most of the time i'm glad I didn't purchase them.
Maybe if apple offered money back if you uninstall after a certain time frame it would reduce pirating but i still highly doubt it.
Click to expand...

That seems more than a little silly to me. It's like saying "hey apple, i downloaded an album, but i didn't really like it so i want my money back" after you paid because you wanted it.

If you want it, buy it. If you don't, don't. If you buy something and find you don't like it, well then you should've been more discerning about what you were throwing your money at.
 
walldawg84 said:
That seems more than a little silly to me. It's like saying "hey apple, i downloaded an album, but i didn't really like it so i want my money back" after you paid because you wanted it.

If you want it, buy it. If you don't, don't. If you buy something and find you don't like it, well then you should've been more discerning about what you were throwing your money at.
Click to expand...

No, that's why there are demo/trial products. Before you buy a new car, you can also make a demo ride, don't you? The same should be for any type of tech products.
 
opeter said:
No, that's why there are demo/trial products. Before you buy a new car, you can also make a demo ride, don't you? The same should be for any type of tech products.
Click to expand...

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Justifying stealing by saying you deserve a trial?

That's like not paying at a restaurant because you decided you wanted the beef instead of the chicken after you finished the chicken.

It won't be long until these people start getting hit with the same type of lawsuits the RIAA hits up music pirates with. And they deserve it.
 
JBaker122586 said:
That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Justifying stealing by saying you deserve a trial?

That's like not paying at a restaurant because you decided you wanted the beef instead of the chicken after you finished the chicken.

It won't be long until these people start getting hit with the same type of lawsuits the RIAA hits up music pirates with. And they deserve it.
Click to expand...

The restaurant comparison is pretty silly really. You can't give back food once it's eaten... Anyway, they often have free samples at markets.

Back when physical media was the norm you could just sell or swap your game/CD/DVD but with digital distribution that's not possible. In this case free trials are really just a common courtesy. Think about the amount of tat on the App Store - I bet a lot of people regret buying apps that are not very good or just plain broken and they have no way of at least making a little of their money back.
 
LouisBlack said:
The restaurant comparison is pretty silly really. You can't give back food once it's eaten... Anyway, they often have free samples at markets.

Back when physical media was the norm you could just sell or swap your game/CD/DVD but with digital distribution that's not possible. In this case free trials are really just a common courtesy. Think about the amount of tat on the App Store - I bet a lot of people regret buying apps that are not very good or just plain broken and they have no way of at least making a little of their money back.
Click to expand...

Then extend that example to the rest of the content of iTunes, not just the app store, I'm sure that everyone on here has at some point bought some music, a video, an app, a podcast, and audiobook, whatever, that has served to disappoint ... but then again it's a matter of taste and use perhaps?

I'm sure there's an app for everybody but then there's going to be apps that somebody won't like and will have wasted their money on, but surely that's an exercise in restraint and not throwing tonnes of money away on apps that you either don't need, or don't use, or end up not liking.

My point comes from the previous 'refund' comment, where if you're spending enough money on applications that you feel you need refunds then you're clearly not thinking about what you're buying and just entering into it without engaging your brain

Have i bought apps that I didn't like, yes. Do I want them refunded because I didn't like them, no. Simply because I made the choice to spend my money on them and have to live with the consequences of that.
 
LouisBlack said:
The restaurant comparison is pretty silly really. You can't give back food once it's eaten... Anyway, they often have free samples at markets.

Back when physical media was the norm you could just sell or swap your game/CD/DVD but with digital distribution that's not possible. In this case free trials are really just a common courtesy. Think about the amount of tat on the App Store - I bet a lot of people regret buying apps that are not very good or just plain broken and they have no way of at least making a little of their money back.
Click to expand...

In my opinion, those people are **** out of luck. To bad if they don't like the app after they bought it. They paid for it, they used it, no refunds!


Free trials ARE a common courtesy, but nobody is forcing devs to release a trial/lite version. The people in question, the ones that regret their purchases, need to rethink what they spend their money on. Their impulsive purchases are of no concern to Apple, nor the devs.

The restaurant reference is pretty valid IMO.

Hank walks into a restaurant, orders the chicken, eats it and then changes his mind and demands his money back. The restaurant can not get the chicken back, and is supposed to give the money back? Umm...no?
Same situation right here.
Edward buys an app in the appstore. He plays with it and decides he doesn't like the app. Edward is and will always be in posession of said app. The appstore and the dev can not get this file back. It's not like they can get in a car, drive to Ed's house, and take the file back.

Software piracy wasn't as big a few years ago... that is why media swapping was the thing to do. With new anti-piracy laws to prevent this, media swapping and refunds for said media is harder to come by.
 
messedkid said:
Hank walks into a restaurant, orders the chicken, eats it and then changes his mind and demands his money back. The restaurant can not get the chicken back, and is supposed to give the money back? Umm...no?
Same situation right here.
Edward buys an app in the appstore. He plays with it and decides he doesn't like the app. Edward is and will always be in posession of said app. The appstore and the dev can not get this file back. It's not like they can get in a car, drive to Ed's house, and take the file back.
Click to expand...

Actually the Android Marketplace deals with this situation very well. Decide you don't want the app within 24 hours and delete it and you won't be charged - sounds pretty fair to me. Then at least it'll weed out all the crap that just clogs up the App Store.

And to the guy that said it's just the same as music and movies on iTunes (sorry to not refer to you by name but I'm on my iPhone and I don't want to reload the thread in another tab) - it's really not. You get a 30 second preview of any song on iTunes and you get trailers for movies... Or you can rent them before buying... Kind of like a trial for an App you may say?

So Apple doesn't need to go round someone's house to reclaim the product...
 
LouisBlack said:
And to the guy that said it's just the same as music and movies on iTunes (sorry to not refer to you by name but I'm on my iPhone and I don't want to reload the thread in another tab) - it's really not. You get a 30 second preview of any song on iTunes and you get trailers for movies... Or you can rent them before buying... Kind of like a trial for an App you may say?
Click to expand...

I agree that is a good way of doing it, the thing that I'm more protesting against is the idea of people buying app after app after app and then demanding a refund when they find one they don't like. Rings back to the oft-used restaurant example that's been mentionned before in this thread.

But, as another point, surely the screenshots of the app and the full description of what it does and how other users have reviewed it would be an indicator as to the quality or behaviour of an app? This is what I was getting at when referencing previewing an app like music or videos, to clarify that point.

The Android method does sound quite interesting, I can't see Apple adopting that policy though as they seem to love the money too much!

There is that other option, as mentionned before, of dev's creating a free trial version for users to try their app before purchasing. I understand it would be a lot of extra work, but there would be users who always try before they buy and would steer clear if there wasn't a trial, and those who might not like it, who would have that option instead of trying to sue the dev or something!
 
JBaker122586 said:
I doubt that figure.
Click to expand...

I guess it would be interesting to know how many apps have been purchased, which, AFAIK, Apple does not release. 10M pirated app copies places it at about 1% the volume of App Store downloads, correct (just passed 1B), but it would be a much larger percentage of purchased app downloads, since presumably the rate of free app downloads far exceeds purchases.

I agree, P.S., that it's stupid for them to brag. I hope those sites get shut down.
 
LouisBlack said:
Actually the Android Marketplace deals with this situation very well. Decide you don't want the app within 24 hours and delete it and you won't be charged - sounds pretty fair to me. Then at least it'll weed out all the crap that just clogs up the App Store.
Click to expand...

Really? That is a great idea... I would love to see Apple implement something like that. Actually, 1 hour would be enough time for me to determine whether I would like to keep the app or not.

I can understand people wanting to try apps before buying... you can only tell so much from screenshots and a description written by the developer. The review system is flawed because you have people making feature requests and arguing in there. And you can usually count on the developer handing out some promo codes to friends in exchange for 5 star reviews. I would love to be able to try apps (especially more expensive ones) for an hour before buying. I have purchased several apps that I regretted within minutes for various reasons (crashing, flawed interface, etc.).
 
As one other person said on the blog...

Hey TDDEBUG. I'd be careful about being to arrogant about your success. You are messing with programmers and their income. I saw on a developer forum some people talking about Appscene and Appulous and they are pretty upset.

It only takes one of these guys to build an app that will rape someone's phone. They could easily write the application, crack it on their own phone, upload it to your website and then use Appulous to point to it posing as any number of other applications that are nearly the same size. Then when the person downloads it and runs on their iPhone it can grab their phone number and post it on a website, delete all their contacts, zip up all their photos and email them, have their phone call Tibet or have some TSR running in the background that constantly shows their location. And that is just the tame things they can do.

It's only a matter of time until you have crossed the wrong person.
Click to expand...
This would be very interesting.
 
Hackers bragging about 10M downloads of cracked apps

Check out this posting: http://appscene.blogspot.com/2009/04/weekly-update-42809.html

So I discovered yesterday that my app was cracked and hosted on their website. Within two weeks over 25k downloads of the app occurred.

You might want to search for your app as well on www.appulo.us.

I am furious! I have a free version of my app on the App Store so people can try before they buy. These guys are criminals!

I think it is time for someone to go on the offensive with these guys. I'm not interested in waiting for Apple to go after them. I kind of like the first posting to the blog.
 
Zippher said:
Check out this posting: http://appscene.blogspot.com/2009/04/weekly-update-42809.html

So I discovered yesterday that my app was cracked and hosted on their website. Within two weeks over 25k downloads of the app occurred.

You might want to search for your app as well on www.appulo.us.

I am furious! I have a free version of my app on the App Store so people can try before they buy. These guys are criminals!

I think it is time for someone to go on the offensive with these guys. I'm not interested in waiting for Apple to go after them. I kind of like the first posting to the blog.
Click to expand...

Why even bother? IF you shut down one site and 100 more will pop up to take its place.

Most people who pirated your app would not have paid for it anyway. So # of downloads doesn't necessary translate into lost revenue.
 
Zippher said:
I think it is time for someone to go on the offensive with these guys. I'm not interested in waiting for Apple to go after them.
Click to expand...

Hearing about stuff like this makes me wary of continuing with the development of my own app. Perhaps you should team up with some other developers to start mounting some kind of legal action?
 
PoitNarf said:
Hearing about stuff like this makes me wary of continuing with the development of my own app. Perhaps you should team up with some other developers to start mounting some kind of legal action?
Click to expand...

and which platform will you develop for that doesn't have a problem with piracy?
 
Ron21 said:
Most people who pirated your app would not have paid for it anyway. So # of downloads doesn't necessary translate into lost revenue.
Click to expand...

Even so, if I had spent 100 hours coding an app and found out that some people were doing this I'd still be pretty upset. You're probably correct that the revenue lost to this group is next to nothing, but it's the principle of the whole thing.
 
PoitNarf said:
Even so, if I had spent 100 hours coding an app and found out that some people were doing this I'd still be pretty upset. You're probably correct that the revenue lost to this group is next to nothing, but it's the principle of the whole thing.
Click to expand...


There are over 30mil iPhone users, most are not jail-broken. The number of jail-broken iPhones is about 2mil. Basically 90+% of the market are legit customers. I think that's an outstanding number for any platform. Plus I'm sure with the new iPhone Apple will make it even harder to jailbreak.
 
mkrishnan said:
I guess it would be interesting to know how many apps have been purchased, which, AFAIK, Apple does not release. 10M pirated app copies places it at about 1% the volume of App Store downloads, correct (just passed 1B), but it would be a much larger percentage of purchased app downloads, since presumably the rate of free app downloads far exceeds purchases.

I agree, P.S., that it's stupid for them to brag. I hope those sites get shut down.
Click to expand...

Since over 90% of apps are free, you can assume that under 10% of apps downloaded are paid apps. Maybe less.

With 1 billion downloaded, probably up to 100 million paid.

However, since people are more likely to download free apps than paid apps, the % is probably less than 10%.

If paid app download is 1%, then the piracy rate is actually 50% of market.
 
can we please STOP comparing this to ripping movies. JUST STOP. Ripping a movie is like taking 0.000000001 cents out of the pocket of some multi-millionaire production company CEO.

"OMG, if enough people do this he'll have to wait 2 extra days to make enough money to buy his $400,000 Bentley. OH THE HUMANITY"

A massive portion of the apps on the appstore are just regular joes, trying to make enough to make a living. There's a big difference between stealing movies and stealing apps. I choose do do neither, but i really don't care if some guy pays $5 to rent a movie and then decides to record it. I do however, have a problem with people stealing apps
 
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