http://bostinnovation.com/2010/07/28/fighting-piracy-on-apple-devices-local-startup-mtiks-ensures-developers-get-paid/

I’m an Apple loyalist. Purchased my first Mac in 1989. So I’ll be damned if I let a PalmPre or Android out-do the capabilities of my iPhone. Now, when I pull my phone out, I can do all and Android & PalmPre owners hate me for it. To be 100% honest, an iPhone out-the-box str8 sux. Im on my 4th iPhone a when they stop JB’n, I’ll stop buying them. I won’t even buy an iPad if I can’t JB it. Wise up Steve.

How many apps were downloaded and used once and uninstalled with in 24 hours. How many apps were downloaded just because they were their?

These guys are using the same flawed argument as the film and music industry and the numbers don’t add up.

Even though they can’t block IMEI’s without having an agreement with the carriers. Man O’ Man Apple needs to step up against pirating apps

About the only apps that may have issues with this is GPS and 20 dollar plus apps like NBA league pass.

10% of a made-up number is still a made up number. My point is that the App Store is an unqualified success for Apple, for Developers and for Consumers. Why anyone would want to mess with the current eco-system is beyond me. What we have today works, and works well. Yes, I’m sure there are people installing cracked apps. However, the overall impact is negligible, and I’d prefer that Apple, Devs, etc. not mess up a good thing by introducing more draconian DRM that only serves to hurt those of us that buy apps.

For those that seem to think we jailbreak just to steal. Two words – Background Tasks!! That’s why I jailbreak. That and to enable tethering that AT&T promised and failed to deliver, oh and also to allow my SlingPlayer to work over 3G. I actually have paid for 2 jailbroken apps and still haven’t pirated anything. If Apple prevents me from jailbreaking my phone, and doesn’t deliver the functionality I’m getting from the jailbreak, then Apple and all of the iPhone developers lose me as a customer. Nothing like biting off your nose to spite your face.

Not to mention, Jeremy wrote the post

Since they very article Rene links to here estimates 40% of jailbreakers pirate, most people with basic match skills would consider numbers less than 1/2 nowhere near “primarily”, the only way to answer your post is

[citation needed]

It should be easy enough for you, if it is proven “time after time” — just put in a link or two research supporting what you constantly assert as “proven.”

Idiots. Apple should crack down more heavily on jailbreaking. And Renee, since time after time it’s proven it’s primarily about stealing apps – you should stop supporting it!

Why is it that the ones downloading pirate soft/music are always considered extremely rich and ready to spend 500x the amount of those paying for the stuff? Doesn’t reality show us the exact opposite?

Btw I am jailbroken and haven’t got any pirate software. On the contrary, I have spent more than $1.000 on the app store (got all major GPS soft).

If TomTom’s app is priced too high, then people not buying it will eventually lower the price. Stealing it is not the solution.

When you implement push notifications, you know the exact unit(s) to which you are pushing. Not that I am condoning piracy, but if a developer cannot distinguish between a pirated and legitimate copy in that context, they have much, much bigger problems.

What about push services? The Developers have to pay for the extra server load from people NOT paying for the app. Apples has to pay for the server load of people downloading all of these apps and not paying for them. Many devs have had to disable push notifications cause they aren’t making any money and not everyone has found a way to block pirated apps.

No App “deserves” to be pirated.

If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.

I recently added a repo on my jailbroken phone for more notification options. I am now almost being forced to browse through cracked apps as the repo only has 1 legit app. Its really annoying. of course i can remove the repo, but then I loose easy updates.

I just looked through what is being hacked, they are mostly $1 apps. Really? just buy it!

However, people who pirate from small time developers are doing some serious harm to the world. Any little start up company or one guy developer deserves to be paid for their hard work. I enjoy supporting this small developers and I think it is a real shame those apps are pirated.

• 10% of iPhones are jailbroken. (The article makes this assumption from unique visitors to Jay Freeman’s site; unless there is a 100% conversion rate here, I would expect this to be a lower, but let’s grant their assumption.)
• 40% of jailbreakers have pirated software

Assuming those numbers are accurate, all piracy is performed by a maximum of 4% of iPhone users.

To achieve the 3:1 ratio cited in the article, assuming the worst case where a pirate never buys an app, these 4% of users would have to download 3 times as many applications as the other 96% of the iPhone community put together. That seems unlikely, but not out of the realm of possibility.

To check, let’s apply those ratios to the most recent full month for which we have data, in December 2009, there were 70 million paid apps downloaded (Flurry’s research says 280 million downloads, of which 25% were paid…280 million * 25% = 70 million.)

If the estimates in the article are to be believed, 210 million iPhone app copies were pirated by 4% of the iPhone base in the month of December alone. That sort of traffic, especially among a relatively small user base, would not go unreported by even the laziest of forensic trackers.

Is is certainly possible December numbers are distorted by Christmas sales, but I have no Oct/Nov data handy. Still, the scale of the alleged piracy rates is so large, and the number of users so relatively small, that these numbers should easily show up in analysis of traffic among torrent trackers, something which is not that difficult to uncover. This would seem an obvious and necessary next step both in stopping piracy and in establishing any credibility among these estimates, and yet the step never seems to be taken. Until it is, it is hard to take these sorts of estimates seriously.

1.5B pirated apps for 3M pirates yields 510 apps each (on average). Sounds like a lot to me…

Also, I’d love to know how the pirated app “detection” works. Is it based on detecting jailbreak? Or actual code to detect cracking? If it’s the former, than lower all figures by 60%.

If I understand iTunes accounts correctly, a unique ID per app would not be compatible with the ability to share iTunes store content between 5 computers, unless Apple is going to provide that data on a realtime basis to every third party (doubtful) or serve as a proxy for every call for server side data an app makes (even more doubtful).

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I happen to believe that if you can’t afford or don’t want to buy something, you simply don’t get that thing. Not that you can cheat and get it anyway, because deep down, you know that the seller hasn’t lost money you wouldn’t have given them anyway.

There will always be some who do it purely for the piracy of apps, but I’m sure the vast majority of jailbreakers, do so, for features in the OS that they feel are lacking.

as has been said above, some people just download for the sake of downloading, they wouldnt actually buy the app anyway, so in the same vein as record labels assuming that every download is a lost sale, the report assumes this as well.

However i agree nick above and the price of gps apps, and these are probably the most pirated apps due to the high price, and not everyone wants to drop a big wad on a gps app without even being apple to try it. At least in a real (physical store) shop you can return something within reason with the app store its not that easy. Maybe the likes of tomtom and navigon should list the app as free, but have an in app purchase to enable full use. Maybe have a time limited “demo” period. That would probably kill a lot of piracy overnight

I would be willing to venture that most “pirated” apps on the iPhone are resulting in ZERO loss to the developer as the user would not have paid for the app in any circumstance.

Quit bitching and go pack to making great software that people want to buy and use!!

What can Apple do ? I think that killing push if pirated apps detected would be great. Then require clean install and scan. Would not stop jailbreak or 3rd party.

For example, if i buy navigon and my friend pirates it, they didn’t lose any money. Not if my friend would never purchase it.

Where devs really are losing money is on apps being shareable between devices on the same itunes profile. http://cnettv.cnet.com/share-your-purchased-iphone-apps-multiple-devices/9742-1_53-50075332.html?tag=rtcol;relvideos

I pay for all my apps. Most others do the same and why not. It isn’t like the price point is that high. Most apps cost less than my lunch. The only place I could see this being a real point of contention is GPS apps. However I have Google Maps for that.

It just doesn’t makes sense to call jailbroken phone owners thieves. Also having dealt with many friends into piracy over the years let me tell you, they don’t use these apps. To them, the apps are about as gold coins in that coins don’t do anything, they just happen to be worth something and they sit in a bank, or a chest I suppose if you are a pirate. These folks store and trade these apps and have them sitting on their computers in massive heaps like treasure, but they mostly don’t play them. The value to them is in accumulation, not in actual use.