BBC: Soviet-era films being sold illegally on iTunes

I guess I must be mistaken: when did Russia get a copyright law? They didn't have one the last time I looked. How do you violate a copyright from a country that doesn't have copyrights?

Apps are one thing. There are unlicensed music in the iTunes store, with the individual's name listed as the recording label/copyright holder. Those are so obvious.

To keep things in context, few of the people claiming the copyright to the soviet movies have anything to do with creation of those movies. The movies were made by state-owned studios by the people employed by the state that no longer exists. If anything should be in public domain - it's those movies.

"Soviet-era films"? That's pretty vague. Wasn't any film released while the USSR was in existence a Soviet-era film?

It's like calling something Space-aged technology. Everything since Sputnik is spage-aged. Oh and Sputnik is Soviet-era technology. As is my Apple IIe.

The Android app store is full of this kind of crap. In terms of operator oversight, there ought to be a middle ground between Apple's prudery, and Android's piracy.

I have to agree. These floods of apps that are each one issue of this or that, one movie etc is not cool. Especially when their is no added value. If you are just going to take a movie and slap it in a basic player and call it an app then it should be rejected and have to go to the regular iTunes store same with these vanilla book apps.

Course I also wish that these free with ads or paid with no adds, free for limited levels apps should have to upgrade via in app purchase. We've seen that IAP shows up on the top gross just fine and it keeps things tidied IMHO

I agree with Matt, what use are the App Store reviewers if they let these apps in? There are hundreds of similar apps that are nothing but pirated ebooks. The developers have *no* intention of licensing the work. They just want to make a few quick sales before the app is taken down.

Apple should both properly screen the apps and ban the developers.

The better question is, who's asleep at the switch and approving these crapplications? From the article, it doesn't appear that the "apps" in question did anything besides play the movie - what's next, "apps" for every pop song that just play the song?

Selling non-subscription books, movies, etc as apps should be banned, IMHO.