Piracy Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Humble Indie Bundle moving towards $1 million, still being pirated

by Mike Schramm (May 11th, 2010)

The Humble Indie Bundle that we posted about the other day is doing quite well -- they've raised almost US$800,000 by selling five indie games (playable on Mac, Linux, and Windows) for pay-what-you-will. In fact, they've done so well that they've added another game into the mix -- you'll also get ...

360iDev: Saurik on the mobile application market

by Mike Schramm (Apr 13th, 2010)

Jay "Saurik" Freeman took the stage here at 360iDev last night to explain the mobile application marketplace. The entire mobile application marketplace, that is. Most people wrongly perceive the App Store to be a simple user-and-developer relationship, but in reality, it's a much more complicated ...

Pirates make away with $450 million in App Store booty?

by Chris Rawson (Jan 13th, 2010)

24/7WallSt. reports that Apple and third-party developers have lost approximately $450 million in revenue from App Store piracy since the store opened in July of 2008. Out of this, $140 million of this counts as lost revenue for Apple – a huge chunk of the $500 - $700 million in revenue the ...

An app with everything but sales

by Mike Schramm (Dec 17th, 2009)

TriplePoint PR's site has a post on their blog about Orbital [iTunes Link], an iPhone game released a while back that I presume is one of their clients. Obviously, they've done their job: we're talking about the game, which is $.99US or available in a lite free version [iTunes Link]. But they've ...

iPhone app claims 95% piracy rate

by Mike Schramm (Oct 28th, 2009)

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/security/iPhone_app_claims_95_piracy_rate'; With all of the success stories coming out of the App Store, it's been pretty easy to forget the problem of piracy for most developers. Not so for Fishlabs, who've posted over on the Touch Arcade forums that their latest game, ...

iCombat's stats on app pirates

by Mike Schramm (May 15th, 2009)

Miguel Sanchez-Grice, creator of the iCombat app (a remake of the old Atari game), sent us these stats on piracy of his app after writing a blog post about the same thing, and I find them fascinating. Instead of building DRM into his app, he just detected if the player was using a copy that wasn't ...

Pirated iWork contains botnet trojan, breaks hearts

by Aron Trimble (Apr 23rd, 2009)

The tubes are ablaze today with news from CNN of the first ever latest malicious program to be found on the Mac. The trojan was first discovered in January but it did not receive wildfire-like popularity until recently when two experts at Symantec published a bulletin on the subject of the malware. ...

Wired dives into App Store piracy

by Christina Warren (Apr 1st, 2009)

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 ...

iPhone app phones home to foil pirates

by Michael Rose (Mar 9th, 2009)

Like many iPhone developers, Ben Chatelain is frustrated to see cracked versions of his project, Full Screen Web Browser, showing up online. Following the usability suggestions of John Gruber, Ben has chosen to do something about it. The latest version of his app has detection capabilities for ...

Ripdev launches anti-piracy service for iPhone developers

by Christina Warren (Feb 11th, 2009)

Last week, the iPhone cracking app-cracking tool, Crackulous, was released, igniting discussions amongst developers and users over App Store security, piracy and how to combat these threats within the confines of Apple's walled-garden. Because of the iPhone SDK, and Apple's Terms of Service for ...

Crackulous is released, chaos imminent

by Christina Warren (Feb 2nd, 2009)

iPhone developers who already have to fight for app approval, exposure and marketing techniques now have a new hurdle to overcome: instantaneous app-cracking. Although cracking iPhone applications for use on a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch is not new, the method has never been so easy or so ...

iPhone dev asks cracker to stop, cracker says to sit on it

by Aron Trimble (Jan 13th, 2009)

Update: It is worth mentioning that there are applications with a free, ad-supported version available and yet the premium version is still cracked. One such example is The Iconfactory's excellent Twitter client, "Twitterrific." Let's say you are a developer and want to have a go at this whole ...

iTunes Plus debuts DRM-free music

by Erica Sadun (May 30th, 2007)

At TUAW we've been following the DRM-free EMI track deal for some time. We're delighted to announce that these tracks will finally available for sale over at the iTunes Store later today (Apple announced they are available, but not in my copy of iTunes at the moment). DRM-free tracks will cost you ...

iTunes civilizes the p2p teen

by Erica Sadun (Apr 18th, 2007)

Does iTunes prevent piracy? That's what this report (registration required) from the UK's PC Pro seems to conclude. 36% of US teens bought music using online stores in 2006, up from 28 in 2004. P2P network use for obtaining unlicensed music fell at the same time according to the article, although ...

Are you a copyright lawbreaker?

by Erica Sadun (Jan 8th, 2007)

You live in the UK. You buy a CD. You rip it to your iPod. All nice and legal, right? Apparently not, according to this article by Will Head of Web User. Head makes the case that UK law is hopelessly twisted when it comes to digital media. Only the creators of digital works have the right to ...