In order for pirating to slow down the rules need to change. I think that pirating will never be completely wiped out, because there will always be people too cheap to pay, and a hacker that is willing to crack/steal the media. But the major cooperation’s (and the government’s) response to pirating will only fuel the fire. Until they are willing to change, pirating will continue and rise. With more reasonable pricing and more trials, pirating will go down.

Keep you friends closer but your “enemies” closer. Because after all we are the leading end of unsatisfied customers who have most of the answers on how to make it better

Looking forward to seeing you there! I’m sure people will be flooding you with ideas when you introduce yourself The crowd there tends to be very receptive to developers, especially when they’re as polite as you!

I can appreciate your cause and would very much welcome any advice you might have about an app format that can give us a monetary return regardless of piracy! Its also on my list to check out your site. I’ll create an account there shortly and introduce myself

Thanks!

Anyway, I’m commenting here because we (meaning, the group of people who support app piracy and sites like mine) often have our intentions twisted or misconstrued. Piracy, as we all know, happens everywhere and is generally a fact of life for any purely digital form of media. It’s something that happens regardless of the efforts made to stop it or what websites get taken down.

My site was founded on the belief that if you can drive a car before you buy it, try on clothes before you buy them, and.. well.. try out software before you buy it, you should be able to try out iPhone apps before purchasing as well. The ‘About’ page of my website hosts a bit of a tirade of Apple’s choice to not implement a solution for this, but many developers feel that the text there is just an excuse, or rather, a justification for illegal activity. The truth is that I meant every word of that, and there are many people in our community who DO buy the apps that they’ve enjoyed from the site. I won’t put a link here because I’m sure you don’t want that on your blog, but there’s a popular web forum linked from the “Learn More” page of my site, where many of these discussions stand as proof that, while many people do use the site simply for piracy, there is an ever-growing number of us who support (and actively encourage the support of) app developers.

Our community in general is certainly (and maybe even rightfully) on the receiving end of a multitude of complaints and threats from developers — but for as many of these as we see, there are a number of developers who have thanked us for our cause. As much as I’m sure that sounds like a lie, we’ve had quite a few reports that after a cracked version of an app is offered, sales increase. Too many developers see that 400-900 people daily run the app without having purchased it, assuming that each of those is a lost sale. Anyone familiar with piracy can assure you that isn’t the case. As sad as it is to say, very few of those people would have actually purchased the app in the first place. The benefit comes from these people showing your app to friends and family first-hand, leading those people buy it themselves — an effect pointed out to us by an independent developer of a game targeted at high-school aged children. And of course, the benefit of the sales made to people who bought because they were able to try it. I notice in your post that you went from 10 sales to 12 — a relatively small increase, but an increase nonetheless. The number of people trying the app outside of that proves largely irrelevant.

You’ll find that much of the community has a very deep respect for good developers, and on a few occasions we’ve had developers join the forum and introduce themselves, just to be greeted by accolades and suggestions of things to put in future versions of their apps to either stymie our common cracking methods or make our cause work for both sides. One developer in particular used our suggestions to have his app switch to an actual demo version upon detection of being cracked. It would allow the users to play 6-10 levels before thanking him for his interest and encouraging him to buy the game. A genius solution to the problem, indeed! While we certainly have the ability the fully crack the game and make it completely playable, it was decided that, out of respect to the developer, we’d leave the game in that form. It’s worked out well for both sides.

Some developers opt to put a free “Lite” version of the game on the Apple Store in order to facilitate this kind of demo, but it’s limited only to the regions where the iTunes Store is accessible.. as a result, even free apps get cracked so that iPod/iPhone users worldwide can use the games. This isn’t mentioned on my site yet, but it’s another very large issue that adds fuel to what we do.

My intention of this overly-long post isn’t necessarily to sway your feelings about who we are or what we do, but more to assure you that we do have respect for developers such as yourself and are always willing to offer tips on an app format that can give you monetary return regardless of piracy.

Best Wishes,
Kyek