Pirated iOS App Store Site Shuts Down 432
A reader writes with this excerpt from CNET: "Installous, a major portal for pirated paid apps from Apple's App Store, won't be around anymore. Development team Hackulous today announced the closure of Installous on their official Web site. As of today, the pirated app store no longer works, and only shows these errors: 'Outdated version. Installous will now terminate' or 'API Error. API unavailable.' For many years, Installous offered complete access to thousands of paid iOS apps for free for anyone with a jailbroken iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Think of it as being able to walk into a fancy department store, steal anything you want, and never get caught."
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Living in the wrong country (Score:5, Informative)
The solution to your problem is called "going to the store and using your cash to purchase an iTunes gift card". Not having a credit card is no excuse when there's a simple and legal recourse available to you. Stop making excuses.
Re:This should be YRO (Score:4, Informative)
As much as you think Apple is making the developers make twice as much. Apples app store is not perfect but it was a huge breakthrough for so many developers. Stealing apps isn't hurting Apple as much as it is developers.
Installous isn't the real story. (Score:4, Informative)
Apptrackr is. Apptrackr shut down which made Installous pointless since that was the repository that Installous pulled from. As far as I understand they are/were owned by different people, but in either case, it's a case of Apptrackr being gone and the frontend made for it being useless.
Re:This should be YRO (Score:4, Informative)
Depends who they're "stealing" from, doesn't it? Since Apple makes so much money from their app store, maybe they feel entitled after overpaying for the hardware...
A feeling of entitlement is a bit natural and expected after taking a financial ass-raping by visiting an Apple store.
How is buying an iPhone being assraped? It sounds entirely consentual to me. The biggest whiners I know about the iPhone's price are the people who are first to get the latest one. It's like being an intern who competes for the position then complains they don't get paid. They knew full well what they were doing, and they signed up for it. If it's so awful, maybe they shouldn't keep buying the iPhones?
Copying is not theft. (Score:1, Informative)
Copying is not theft. Copying is not stealing. It is NOT the same thing.
Back in 1985 a man named Dowling was prosecuted for the Interstate Transportation of Stolen Property for selling infringing copies of Elvis records. U.S. Supreme Court in DOWLING v. UNITED STATES, 473 U.S. 207 (1985) http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=search&court=US&case=/us/473/207.html [findlaw.com] struck this down because copyright infringement is not theft. You have to deprive your victim of the item in order to steal it from them. Making copies doesn't deprive anyone of what is being copied, therefore its not theft.