Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone, App Store, Jailbreak/pwnage
Wired dives into App Store piracy
App Store piracy is a growing concern for more and more developers, thanks to tools like Crackulous and various BitTorrent trackers. Although developers are fighting back, this is a problem that really isn't going away.So how widespread is App Store piracy? Earlier this week, Wired's Brian X. Chen spoke with a number of developers and analysts about the issue, and right now, it looks like piracy is still relatively self-contained. According to Medialets, a mobile analytics and advertising company, approximately 5,000 of the 25,000 paid apps in the App Store have been cracked. The company also reports that some programs have as high as a 100-1 pirate-pay ratio -- dramatic, but not necessarily catastrophic.
It isn't all doom and gloom, however. As the Wired piece points out, some developers see the level of piracy as completely inconsequential. Others, like BeeJive have had to fight back against cracking, but have also used it as an indicator that the price of an app needs to decrease.
I take issue with Chen's citation of a 2008 Business Software Alliance study that claimed that the economic impact of software piracy is in the tens of billions of dollars each year. While software piracy undoubtedly has an economic impact, the figures that the BSA claims are just insane. Each pirated copy of a piece of software does not necessarily equal a lost sale and while software piracy, in any form, is certainly bad for the overall software ecosystem, distorting the truth doesn't help the situation.
Our own Michael Rose talked about App Store piracy with the CEO from Medialets on TechVi this morning and the conversation is pretty interesting.
Of course, the crackers may end up bringing themselves down, which is kind of cute.
[hat-tip Apple 2.0]
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Eugeniu said 4:43PM on 4-01-2009
Piracy exists the way it does because every single app for the iPhone and iPod touch used to be completely free. Well almost; there was an app that hid videos and apps that asked for a key. But 99.9% of it was free. With the introduction of the Appstore however, pricing started existing. There were many apps from Installer and Cydia that were freely given then, but started selling with a price on the Appstore. One example is iPhysics. iPhysics was an excellent game that dealt with gravity, shapes, and whatnot. When the Appstore came out, the developer made a "lite" edition of it for $1.99. You couldn't download more levels with the lite edition and some features were removed. He never even bothered making the hypothesized full edition that he planned to sell for $9.99. Another example is a very simple multi-player hockey board game offered on Installer. It popped up on the Appstore for $0.99.
People, such as myself, have always been used to freely given games, and many refuse to adapt to pricing. Especially in this economy. That's why piracy exists.
Sorry if I made any mistakes typing this...I'm too lazy to autocorrect. :)
Reply
Carlos said 4:14PM on 4-02-2009
You really have no place speaking about the current state of the economy, when you yourself are stealing from hardworking individuals. You are part of the problem, not the solution.
If you really can't afford a $0.99 app, then you are doing pretty bad in life.
Eugeniu said 5:15PM on 4-02-2009
Me? No, no, you have me wrong. I buy apps. I do. If purchase history for iTunes was public and online, I'd send you a link for proof. But I'm saying that back in the day when Apple refused to offer any form of SDK for the iPhone and jailbreaking was at it's height, I had a jailbroken iPod with pages of free, legit apps. And it took me a while to get used to apps you'd have to pay for to get all the features. It was just annoying that Apple forced all developers to create apps within their boundaries, then offer the ability to charge for apps.
And speaking of getting apps for free, I think it would be worthwhile to note that throughout the existence of the Appstore, the economy has actually gone down significantly. Interestingly enough, the economy has started slumping shortly after Apple announced the iPhone SDK in late 2007. I think it's a coincidence, but either way, the Appstore certainly did not help the economy.
Jon said 4:45PM on 4-01-2009
I'm surprised Apple hasn't released a patch to fix some of the vulnerabilities the cracks are exploiting. One is a simple plist edit which would be very easy to fix.
Reply
Dave said 4:55PM on 4-01-2009
What's shocking is the level of "cheapness" of some people. Granted for what you get some of the apps cost too much; however, aside from a handful of insanely expensive apps, most are just a few dollars. One could just buy an app for the price of a coffee, or lunch.
The only thing I don't like is that there is no option to try-before-you-buy. Nor is there an easy refund system. There are some applications I would like to try before I invest but the screenshots or description don't make it clear if the application would really fit what I'm looking for. Perhaps this is why people are using pirated copies??
Reply
Chip Warden said 5:08PM on 4-01-2009
I love it. Once again TUAW advocates software piracy:
“I take issue with Chen's citation of a 2008 Business Software Alliance study that claimed that the economic impact of software piracy is in the tens of billions of dollars each year. While software piracy undoubtedly has an economic impact, the figures that the BSA claims are just insane. Each pirated copy of a piece of software does not necessarily equal a lost sale and while software piracy, in any form, is certainly bad for the overall software ecosystem, distorting the truth doesn't help the situation.”
The BSA’s numbers may be crap, but that doesn't change the fact that pirating software is theft, just as stealing a car is theft. Distorting that truth certainly doesn't help the situation.
Reply
Christina Warren said 5:17PM on 4-01-2009
That is absolutely not my position. I think app store piracy is wrong and is clearly theft (read anything else I've written regarding piracy and you'll see that holds up). That said, I take issue with using numbers from an organization like the BSA, which overinflate and overvalue the real impact of piracy. When such insane numbers are bandied about, it becomes easy to just tune out or ignore the figures, because they are clearly out of the realm of possibility. If accurate numbers were reported -- or even better, screw the numbers, show how it affects real people who write software -- that would be one less avenue for pirates to justify their actions.
Dave said 10:33PM on 4-01-2009
Very well said Christina.
Chip Warden said 10:41AM on 4-02-2009
Allow me to retort:
First, it was not my intention to imply a defect in your character. I specifically referred to the quoted section as an example of an editorial bias I've noticed in TUAW articles over the past couple of months regarding piracy on the iPhone. I apologize if you took this any other way.
Second, not liking or agreeing with the BSA's figures regarding the economic impact of piracy on the software industry is in no way germane to the topic of piracy -- in fact, economic impact of any sort is not relevant at all. By editorializing your opinion of the BSA's numbers, you're giving the thieves in question a classic straw man argument to support their actions: "Well, since the BSA's numbers are crap and everyone knows it, and I was never going to pay money for this app anyway, it's okay to pirate this software."
Did I just say economic impact is not relevant to software piracy? Indeed I did. If a developer writes an app and prices it in such a way that no one buys it and he or she starves to death, that's their problem. However, the fact that the price is too high and no one buys doesn't give anyone the right to pirate that app. Returning to my car theft analogy: "The price of that car is too high, so I can't buy it. I guess I'll just steal it." Sorry, go to jail.
If you don't like the BSA's numbers, write an article on why those numbers are wrong. However, when writing an article about software piracy, obfuscation of the fact that software piracy is theft still doesn't help the situation.
JD said 5:16PM on 4-01-2009
Is piracy more common on the iPhone than on PCs? Do we want Apple to lock down our personal computers to prevent piracy there? Or is the interest in this issue just more iPhone over-excitement?
Reply
Christina Warren said 5:22PM on 4-01-2009
It's far less common on the iPhone than on PCs, in part because in order to use pirated apps, one must first jailbreak their device and then hunt down cracked software that will work. It's just that because this is such a new avenue for distribution, developers are obviously concerned about piracy.
I do think Apple should enhance the IPA protection scheme, because it is far too easy to crack and that isn't fair to developers. The App Store is the only avenue for sanctioned app sales, and as such, Apple should be working to thwart the pirates and not leaving all the work to other developers.
Jon said 6:52PM on 4-01-2009
It's much easier for someone to pirate apps on the iPhone because every app has the same DRM protection (I don't put much faith in the third party protection systems), whereas there is no anti-piracy standard on desktop machines and so desktop app developers benefit somewhat from obscurity.
JD said 4:04PM on 4-02-2009
You both say it is easy, yet Christina says it is relatively uncommon. I'm not sure I understand that. My understanding of pirating on PCs is that one generally just needs a serial number and a copy of the software to pirate most inexpensive software. That seems a lot easier than "jailbreaking" and cracking each app, given how many steps even the Gizmodo "easy" guide to jailbreaking entailed -- it looked quite scary, and a lot harder than downloading a torrent or a serial number. It may be easy once you've jailbroken and someone else has done the cracking work, but it still seems like that's a pretty effective barrier, regardless of the fact that the few thousand who have crossed the barrier are pirating like mad. (And even those cases would rarely have been purchases, since it seems hard to believe that someone would go through all that effort just to save on a few $.99 apps, or even a $10 IM app.)
randall bennett said 5:49PM on 4-01-2009
But more to the point, isn't TechVi the best show in the history of television ever? =)
Thanks for posting the conversation this morning, I thought it went well.
Reply
mark said 6:37PM on 4-01-2009
You wrote:
"a 100-1 pirate-pay ratio -- dramatic, but not necessarily catastrophic."
If you mean that for every 1 paid copy, there are 100 pirated copies, I'd say that's more than catastropic.
However, I suspect you really meant that for every 100 paid copies, there's 1 pirated copy -- except that's not what you *wrote*. :-) You need to flip the words "pirate" and "pay," so they properly correspond to the ratio, like so:
"a 100-1 pay-pirate ratio."
By doing so, your statement will make sense. :-)
Reply
Michael Rose said 10:37PM on 4-01-2009
If you read the original Wired piece, the ratio indeed is 100 pirated copies for every 1 paid copy. Dramatic, yes. However, the developers are still making money and not throwing up their hands in despair -- hence not catastrophic.
Dale Curtis said 6:42PM on 4-01-2009
Your description of BSA's software piracy estimates as "insane" is a bit exaggerated itself. While you're right that not every piece of pirated software would be replaced with licensed software if all illegal sources were shut down, the IDC estimates are still a reliable way of estimating the scale of piracy, which is more than a third of all software installed worldwide. Imagine the problems we'd have if a third of all autos on the streets were stolen.
The total losses to society are actually higher than what IDC estimates due to ripple effects such as fewer jobs in IT services, lower tax revenues to support needed government services, and the costs of cyber security incidents from using malware-infected or poorly maintained software. For example, according to Information Week, the Conficker virus has spread the most in countries with high piracy rates.
The issue is one of respect. Smart phones are popular, and smart phone apps are the new target for pirates. Like most other software, that software is generally sold via license, and people need to simply respect that license. If they think the small price to pay is too much, then they should find a suitable alternative, not rip off software developers.
Reply
colouroflight said 12:36AM on 4-02-2009
You can tell yourself it's "theft" all you want, but it's really, really not. Neither in any sensible person's eyes nor in the eyes of the law.
Stealing someone's car is a LOT different than pirating their app.
Reply
Mobiguan said 12:42AM on 4-03-2009
colourflight you are so very wrong. It is theft plain and simple. Why is not theft, because you are stealing something not tangible? If an architect works for months on plans and drawings for a house and you take his files and use them without paying, is this not stealing? You bet it is, and it is the same thing with apps.
Perhaps Apple doesn't mind people stealing apps. Think about this, what would happen if people cracked iTunes and started downloading all the songs for free? My guess is security updates would immediately be issued and lawsuits would start flying.
However app piracy creates buzz and excitement which drives iPhone sales. Most apps are made by independent developers. Not big record companies which can defend themselves. And carriers don't care. They don't get a share of app sales, and piracy might increase data usage which benefits them.
Reply