Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store
Lifted tutorial code winds up in $0.99 App Store tennis game
For some, the recently released iTennis game in the iTunes App Store looked extremely familiar -- that's because it was a rather blatant ripoff of code provided by the iCodeBlog, a site known for its free iPhone coding tutorials. The original tutorial, written by Brandon Trebitowski, was apparently compiled and submitted by Peter Sheen of BlaBlaIncTech and placed on sale for $.99USD on iTunes in late May.
Trebitowski revealed the theft through iCodeBlog yesterday, and Jonathan Siegel got in touch with us regarding the situation. As response has gotten out through iCodeBlog, there has been a backlash through both BlaBlaIncTech's site and the App Store. As a result, around 4:45 Pacific Time, the game was pulled from iTunes.
In an attempt to contact someone from BlaBlaIncTech, I headed over to the site to find no contact information except for a support chat that was spammed with nearly 15,000 comments regarding the theft. While I was writing up this post, BlaBlaIncTech removed the link to its guestbook from the front page of the site. Ten minutes later, the game was gone from the App Store. Ten minutes after that, all mention of iTennis was gone from BlaBlaIncTech's site.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
garybau said 10:15AM on 7-12-2009
maybe they thought no-one would notice....
wrong!
seems to be an element of get quick advantage in the APP store..some APPs are not as they seem, just dressed up adware
hopefully little reward for their little efforts
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amro said 9:25PM on 7-09-2009
how much more lame could someone get?
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ymilord said 9:27PM on 7-09-2009
Uh, The same goes for that Metal Detector app in the App Store. Its a Sample app in the 3.0 SDK Tutorials...
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MikeS said 12:57AM on 7-10-2009
Plenty of recompiles in the appstore. Most of the bubble level apps do little more than the sample code in the SDK. I recall that I saw a periodic table of elements app that is the Elements sample app. Not only a rip-off, but imagine the level of support you're going to get from someone that can only compile someone else's code.
kubus1234 said 4:40PM on 7-14-2009
which sample code you mean??? Can't find something similar in the sample code 3.0 collection
Macopotamus said 9:31PM on 7-09-2009
This isn't the only one, there's
iPong: Tennis Edition (Matthew Saeger, Free)
iTennisGame (Khalid Shaikh, $4.99)
Power Tennis (iTechTouch, $0.99)
Tennis (Lutz Fink, $0.99)
all from the same code base with minimal, if any, changes.
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puhsitch said 1:02AM on 7-10-2009
Wow, check out how many crappy applications that Khalid Shaikh guy has up there. 84 freakin' pages!
Dav said 9:33PM on 7-09-2009
Looking at BlaBlaIncTech's site you get the impression it's written by a 12 year old. Probably not even far from the truth.
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Luigi193 said 9:34PM on 7-09-2009
I paid a whole dollar for a chemistry app, and it was IDENTICAL to the sample code apple provides :(
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ramond said 9:47PM on 7-09-2009
What's the problem here? The code is in the public domain, anyone can sell it.
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Macopotamus said 9:43PM on 7-09-2009
Unless I've missed something, it doesn't seem to be explicitly stated that the code is in the public domain.
The US Copyright Office states:
"Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device."
Therefore, assuming this guy is in the US, this is a copyright infringement.
ramond said 9:50PM on 7-09-2009
Oh get real! This is just some hobbyiest posting some code, of course its public domain.
Macopotamus said 9:51PM on 7-09-2009
Not according to US law.
ramond said 9:55PM on 7-09-2009
Yeh well US law is a joke. People in the US sue each other for assault with a deadly garden water hose.
Michael Rose said 11:54PM on 7-09-2009
Ramond, you keep saying "public domain." I do not think that means what you think it means.
Anything on iCodeBlog is the property of the author, unless he or she explicitly and specifically places it into the public domain. There's absolutely no indication of that happening here.
By default, anything published in the US since March 1989 is automatically copyrighted, whether or not there is an explicit copyright notice on the work.
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter8/
Macopotamus said 10:06PM on 7-09-2009
Laws regarding whether a work is copyrighted are remarkably similar throughout the world. If you're in the UK or anywhere else in the EU, this law would be the same.
US law is much more liberal in what you can do with copyrighted work, the UK quite strict, but I doubt either allow work to be taken and sold without permission.
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Tom said 10:32PM on 7-09-2009
Its not all gone tuaw...
http://blablainctech.webs.com/apps/forums/
iTennis has its place there in their forums
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NightOne said 1:18AM on 7-10-2009
I am wondering if Apple needs to raise the price of admission to the App Store to get all these BS trash peddlers out.
Khalid Shaikh is a perfect example. 84 Pages of absolute crap for $4.99 each. Curious if holds any copyright on the celebrity images that he made a bunch of "applications" with.
Not to mention the delays real developers of real applications are experiencing with the app approval process thanks to idiots such like Khalid Shaikh clogging up the channel with their crap.
In my opinion, Apple is getting on shaky ground when it comes to integrity and the App Store.
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Rodney Yates said 5:16AM on 7-10-2009
That Khalid Shaikh dude should be banned from the AppStore. It is absolutely ridiculous what this guy is doing, creating hundreds of apps that just read one rss-feed for 4,99 each.
kmcgrady90 said 5:00AM on 7-10-2009
I'm a developer and I would happily pay more to get on the app store if it meant then end of developers such as Khalid Shaikh. 84 pages of useless applications is one of the reasons it is taking Apple 3 weeks to review my applications update. Developers should also be banned from releasing 50 versions of the same app (e.g. an app for every football team in the league) as it holds up the review process and can push new apps off the what's new section severely hurting sales of a new app.
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