One in five App Store titles available on pirate sites
With nearly every computer application, song, movie and TV show worth wanting, and a lot that isn’t, available for “free” via peer to peer sites and BitTorrent trackers worldwide, it shouldn’t surprise you that piracy of App Store applications is a growing problem. One company that tracks who’s using their apps says 60 percent of the active installations haven’t been paid for.
Quoting data from market research company Medialets, Wired reports that of the more than 25,000 applications listed on the iTunes App Store at least 5,000 have been pirated. Further, available information also shows that dozens of apps are being ripped off at a rate of 100 illegal copies for every one that’s legally purchased.
“It’s a real problem that developers, Apple and the community need to address,” points out Eric Litman, CEO of Medialets.
Developing in the wild, wild West
“When I first saw it on Pirate Bay I couldn’t decide whether to freak out or to say, ‘Whoa, cool!,” said Steve Demeter, creator of Trism (iTunes).
“We think that current piracy of content from the App Store is much more widespread than most people realize. This will hopefully be a temporary state, mostly due to the ‘newness’ of the App Store. It is like the Wild West,” according to Kai Yu, president of BeeJive.
See also: Wild, Wild West, Escape Club
BeeJive’s Yu says his eponymous IM application (BeeJive $16, iTunes) includes analytics functionality that indicates 60 percent of tracked activity comes from people using pirated copies. However, Trism’s Demeter says that piracy, although his app was among the first listed on hacker sites, hasn’t really had much of an effect on him.
Tools of the trade
That said, two hacking tools are helping to drive the growth of App Store piracy: 1.) Crackulous, a utility that removes FairPlay digital rights management protection from apps purchased on the App Store, 2.) the appearance of InstallerApp, which allows the installation of apps without jailbreaking.
Ironically, InstallerApp sells for $7 a copy and Crackulous’ creator has lashed out at fellow hackers for distributing his application without permission (“I personally think this leak is absolutely disgusting, and downright insulting”).
To date, piracy on the iPhone is still a relatively muted problem, one that hasn’t elicited much panic from either developers or Apple. However, the appearance of Medialets report highlights anew the utter lack and crying need for new thinking about unpaid developers, absurd copyright laws, hackers and what we should be doing about these problems.
Can any software be successfully protected without crippling the product? From the other perspective, why is it that so few individuals benefit from knowledge and techniques that are clearly the property of everyone (ie software developers aren’t created in a vacuum)?
Inquiring minds want to know…
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