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 As of today, the pirated app store no longer works, and only shows these errors: 'Outdated version.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."
This should be YRO (Score:3)
Stealing $.99 games is clearly a right
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$100 a month service charges
Yet, you can't afford $0.99 software, lol
I did (Score:2)
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I use prepay so I'm "stuck" buying my kit. Even if you pay full retail, it's still cheaper in the long run.
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Those prices tend to include the assumption of subsidy for a phone, because pretty much everyone goes that route, so you're kind of paying for it anyway. Though I was reading that one of the carriers has a $40/month plan for people with their own phones (though the article specifically said iphone, I doubt it's restricted to iphones, that wouldn't make any sense) but that they were hardly getting any takers on it. (I think it may have been t-mobile?). well worth looking into, if I weren't moving abroad in
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Ouch.
Australia is "as big" as the US (physical size, not population) and my phone plan is $20 a month. 1.5 GB of data and more voice time/SMS than I'll ever use. And national coverage of course (within the same country has never even been called 'roaming' here, it's always been completely normal and assumed that a phone/plan works the same anywhere in the country).
Having said that, that doesn't include a subsidized phone - I bought the phone outright because I hate contracts. So the cost of the phone is an
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I have no problem with paying for what I want from the app store, but seriously... who pays full price for an iPhone, or that kind of price for their plan? I know things are different from country to country, but I got my first and only iPhone (these days I use Android) free with a ã36 per month plan.
You paid full price for the iPhone, and then some. Of the £36 per month (I hope everyone knows that £ is a British pound mutilated by the Slashdot software) about £22 is the full price of the iPhone in 24 monthly installments, plus some generous interest.
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And you know lately? I have found spending as much as $5 to be more convenient than downloading things and taking my chances that there is no malware inside.
That said, I have a bit of a problem with Google's play and others. They all validate your license to apps in some way. I legally had many things from Amazon's app store and was troubleshooting my phone as something had gone awry and removed the Amazon app store from my phone. Then everything I bought through there stopped working. That's a string
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.
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?
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Piracy = Theft Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh wow, the piracy / physical theft analogy. Looks like the first Slashdot troll of the year!
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It's almost like walking into a library and reading any book you want.
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And indeed theres nothing wrong with you using the commercial software that's on the libraries computers.
However, go to the library and copy the commercial software, or photocopy an entire book, and you're stealing.
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As it has no comparison to walking into an actual department store, fancy or otherwise, and stealing, the point is far more valid than your attempt to troll.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Oh wow, looks like the second Slashdot troll of the year!
Re:Piracy = Theft Analogy (Score:4, Insightful)
Someone had to do the work to get that particular combination of ones and zeroes to line up. Our laws give them copyright governing how they are distributed and they choose to ask for money in exchange.
Re:Piracy = Theft Analogy (Score:5, Interesting)
If/when we fix copyright laws, then I might respect them more. You want copyrights for software? Five years. You want copyrights for music, books, and movies? Fifteen years. That's it, no more. Software is all but useless from an economic point of view after five years. Works of fiction never lose value, but still, fifteen years. Original research in a scientific field, I might go to 30 years. Genuine R&D, that takes dump truck loads of money? I might go thirty years on that as well.
In today's world, I have zero respect for copyright law.
Re:Piracy = Theft Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
If/when we fix copyright laws, then I might respect them more. You want copyrights for software? Five years. You want copyrights for music, books, and movies? Fifteen years. That's it, no more. Software is all but useless from an economic point of view after five years. Works of fiction never lose value, but still, fifteen years. Original research in a scientific field, I might go to 30 years. Genuine R&D, that takes dump truck loads of money? I might go thirty years on that as well.
I agree with you on the length of copyrights. They are way too long. And I'm absolutely with you on taking civil disobedience action to make the point.
So, what you need to do is only copy-without- permission software that is older than 5 years. And music, books and movies that are older than 15 years.
If you copy new stuff, then that just makes it clear you're just a pirate, not a principled opposer of unfair copyright.
In fact this argument about unfair copyright lengths has been used so often I keep expecting someone to launch a sight that lists, possibly with links to download, items that are beyond a certain age. To facilitate this principled civil disobedience. But I don't see any. Which makes me think that maybe this argument is really just a lot of hot air, designed to make the proposer feel better about his piracy.
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To tell the truth, there isn't much new content that I want to mess with. A few songs, no movies, no television stuff. Maybe some books. MOST of my music and other entertainment is quite old.
Software is another matter - which is why I'm a Linux guy. I haven't felt the desire to "steal" any software since I made the switch. There's an application to do anything and everything I might want to do, without forking over an hour's wages, or more. Everything on my computer is distributed free of charge, and
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Software is another matter - which is why I'm a Linux guy.
Do you abide by the GPL and believe others should?
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Yep. Anyone who uses a GPL'd free product should expect that if/when he passes that free item on, he doesn't charge for it.
Remember, I'm primarily arguing against unbridled corporate greed with my rants against current copyright law. Corporations should have only a limited time in which to make money on the "products" that they bring to market.
Copyleft, on the other hand, is already what copyright SHOULD be after a few years. If there's any greed involved in copyleft, it's to subtle for me to see.
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You clearly misunderstand GPL. It makes no requirement as to charging or not, only source distribution.
Re:Piracy = Theft Analogy (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep. Anyone who uses a GPL'd free product should expect that if/when he passes that free item on, he doesn't charge for it.
So that's one software license you take seriously.
But what about people that don't agree? Surely they have as much right as you to ignore the license and do what they like. If they are developing some closed source software for example, why shouldn't they copy code from something GPLed? So long as it fits their personal morality.
Remember, I'm primarily arguing against unbridled corporate greed with my rants against current copyright law
Fine. But this story is about the App Store, where the majority of apps are from independent developers who are charging 99c.
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GPL does make a point about charging for the software. It very specifically says that you MAY NOT charge for the software. It also specifically states that you may not charge to distribute, but that you MAY collect a small fee for the time and materials that might be consumed in reproducing that software (burning a CD or whatever). As for the source distribution, yes, you're required to "make the source available" when you redistribute.
This is why so many companies have modeled their business on SUPPORT,
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You mean where it says in section 4: "You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee."
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html [gnu.org]
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You're being very generous on R&D, as currently they only get 20 years. And that's because R&D uses patents rather than a copyright.
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The research often becomes patentable, but genuine research is also copyrightable. Someone has to maintain records of what was tried, how it worked, and how it sparked further research in the same or another direction. All of that documentation, speculation, and verification on paper, or on computer logs, is copyrightable, I'm sure. Most of it probably becomes "trade secret" instead of published material, but I think you get my point.
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You're being very generous on R&D, as currently they only get 20 years. And that's because R&D uses patents rather than a copyright.
That's 20 years from the filing date though, not 20 years from the date of invention/date of first spend on R&D. There are often several years of research which happen before the filing date.
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That may be true but it in no way makes physical theft (where an actual object is taken and the owner is deprived of that object) the same as copying (where no object is taken). The corporations want to make the analogy in order to make the plebs see copying as theft but it is a slight of hand. They are not the same thing and only the terminally stupid would fall for the trick.
Re:Piracy = Theft Analogy (Score:5, Interesting)
And what do you call it when I insist on $.99 in exchange for being allowed to use the program I wrote and you are using that program and paid me nothing? It cost me time (labor) to write the code, compile the code, go through the checklists to submit to the app stores. I don't work for free. My time is worth something to me. So in a way it is theft. Theft of my time. Time I could have spent earning extra income helping someone with an odd job or time I could have spent going out with friends or even getting a couple extra hours of sleep.
I've had people say to me, "But you should feel proud that people are using your app."
My response is I didn't write that app to get a happy feeling. Happy feelings don't buy coffee. I wrote my apps in the hopes others would find them fun or helpful and in exchange spend a buck that goes towards my coffee fund.
Do I make a lot of money from my apps? I made a little over $8500 last year. It's not replacing my day job yet, but it did buy this laptop and plenty of coffee on the weekends.
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After being burnt twice now in buying apps, I always try before I buy. However I've never had a pirated app on any of my devices for longer than 15 minutes. Ever.
Taking a peek at my spreadsheet, I've spent $432 in apps this past year alone, and am at $960 total.
If there is an app over $5 I'm interested in, I would always install the pirated app, make sure the app is what it claims, make sure the author isn't lying completely with a fake app, monitoring firewall logs to make sure it's not trying to send my
Re:Piracy = Theft Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to argue that this type of control is not reasonable for a content maker to desire, then that's an entirely different kettle of fish to suggesting that copyright infringement isn't theft, and even at best is moving the goalposts. Please consider the alternative to copyright before subscribing to that belief however... and the alternative is not public domain.
Re:Piracy = Theft Analogy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Piracy = Theft Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
They can *ask* to be paid, but there is no right to get paid or "Should".
Indeed, it's called offering it for sale. But they certainly do have a right to get paid if you take a copy of the software.
The distinction is that requiring that you get money for your effort is borderline extortion.
Workers are applying extortion by expecting to get paid for their efforts? Have you ever had a job in your life?
That's the trouble with open source fans. They know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
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Re:Piracy = Theft Analogy (Score:4, Insightful)
That's possibly the most moronic statement ever made about this topic.
The next time your salary is due to be deposited or a client is due to pay your bill, I hope they suggest that they refuse to be extorted and tell you to fuck off.
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I work->I get paid.
Plenty of people during the last 1000 years have worked without being paid - slaves...
History tells me that these slaves were given some basic necessity(food, shelter). It wasn't good conditions but a starving slave isn't useful so they were fed. Effort -> compensation. In this case, the compensation is food.
what if the world hates your work and no one buys it, nor pirates it? Still feel 'entitled' to compensation?
In the app world, you exchange payment for a copy of the app. Therefore the relation isn't "I develop an app->I get paid", it's "I sell a copy->I get paid", therefore I only expect compensation if I someone use a copy of my app, legel or not, so yes, I feel intitled to compensat
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People act like the bad part about being a slave was the field work and the whippings. That part was no different from the Royal Navy of the time. The bad part was that you weren't free, that you were the property of another man to dispose of quite literally as he pleased. That your children, should you have any, were his property too.
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Usually, you sign a contract and agree on a payment before you start the job. You made no such agreement before starting an app.
Re:Piracy = Theft Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
It never ceases to amaze me how people with a background in computer programming and operations (as you clearly have) will discount their own labor, and the labor of others.
The iOS / Android store model is everything that the Slashdot crowd claims to support in software development. Most of the money goes to the developers, and most of those developers are not rich. In return for putting the effort into writing and maintaining a software package that gives you many hours of enjoyment (or utility), a developer asks for less money that you'd pay to buy a candy bar or can of soda. It is the micropayment support system that everyone used to wish for back in the days of multi-hundred dollar monopoly software prices, and yet somehow, to some people, it is still too much to pay.
I support the iOS / Android store model, and I say that as someone who has written an open source software utility with thousands of users. I distribute it freely, but that is my choice, not the choice of someone else. I have zero sympathy for those who think they have the right to make that choice for someone who is only asking you to pay one or two dollars for his time and effort.
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So what kind of applications were available for multi-hundred dollars before the iOS/Android store models but are now available really cheap at the iOS/Android stores?
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The iOS / Android store model is everything that the Slashdot crowd claims to support in software development.
Perhaps for some, yet for me it's just a pile of turd and I'm also on /.
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.
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You're arguing against a much larger problem than merely an issue with iOS or Android. You're arguing against the ability for any company to license its products for sale only in a particular region. That's hardly an issue that's specific to app stores, nor is it an excuse to pirate software.
But if you really want to purchase those apps, it's not hard to do so via "gray" means. Just switch your country within iTunes (from the store's main page, scroll to the bottom and click the circular flag icon for your
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Hey man, like, that car is just made from a combination of atoms. Atoms don't belong to anyone. They were born in the big bang, and rain from the skies or are dug from mother earth. We have just as much right to that car as anyone else does. Let's take it for a ride.
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There's a bit more to programming than bogosorting [wikipedia.org] a string of zeros and ones
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The "argument" is not "pointless". Ones and zeros have almost no value. They are reproducible, infinitely, for free. But, you want to charge me a dollar just to use one particular combination of ones and zeros?
Your comment is pointless. Letters and punctuation have almost no value. They are reproducible, infinitely, for free. But, you want me to derive argumentative points from your particular arrangement of them?
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Point taken then. But, you also seem to miss my point. I'm not browsing the intartubez and "stealing" everything I can find. I'm objecting to, and rebelling against current copyright laws. Several congress critters could tell you how passionate I am on this subject. I have written a LOT of emails to Washington. Anyone whose valid email address I have discovered has heard from me on the subjects of ACTA, NPP, SOPA, and more.
The laws are patently unjust, and I can't condemn anyone for violating them.
Kin
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In the absence of a government or state, you would still have physical property. If you have a loaf of bread, I would have to take it by force or coercion. Once I took it from you, you would no longer have that bread and I would.
You're confusing the differing concepts of property and possession. A thief possesses a stolen object, but doesn't own it.
seeking the protection of a warlord seems like a common choice.
You probably want to ease up on the WoW and LoTR.
In this same absence of state or government, you walk by me whistling a little tune you made up. I start whistling the same tune. You can keep whistling your tune even though I have "stolen" it from you. You can try to protect your "tune" by not whistling it, but as soon as you share it - it is free.
How about a joke?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YE9Kthyaco [youtube.com]
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an artificial creation of western culture.
No, it's the artificial creation of any culture which has progressed beyond hunter-gatherer status. Aboriginal Australians didn't. That doesn't make them stupid, but it does mean they were living a very primitive life. It's not as though China and Japan didn't have property before they met Westerners.
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No one mentioned theft, they mentioned stealing.
Steal:
v. stole, stolen, stealing, steals
1. To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
Seems to apply to me.
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Theft:
noun
1. The act of stealing
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Okay, so now we can combine these two definitions to define theft as... "The act of tak[ing] (the property of another) without right or permission."
So by extension, not only have we established that stealing was indeed the correct word to use here, and entirely applicable, but also that one possible definition of theft does not require depriving someone else of the items, so it could be argued reasonably that this is both stealing *and* theft, not just stealing.
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Oddly, synonyms don't always mean exactly the same thing, they have subtly different meanings. If they did mean the exact same thing, we'd only have one word for it.
Synonym:
noun
1. A word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrase in the same language.
Your turn!
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The point is that no incorrect definition was used. The summary mentions stealing. Stealing, means, amongst other things "To take (the property of another) without right or permission." This is exactly what was happening on the pirate app site –people were taking property of another without right or permission. Stealing was occurring, no incorrect definition was being used.
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Piracy involves theft. Always. That's why its called piracy.
As for what is being stolen by piracy, it is the measure of control that the content maker is supposed to have over who is allowed to copy their work, which is the entire point of copyright in the first place. And while this is an abstract and not a physical thing,. but the lack of physicality does not preclude some people considering it to be of great value.
OI course, the entire notion of "property"
Cost of Apps (Score:5, Insightful)
And seriously, who is so cheap that they would refuse to pay 69p for whatever game is popular at the moment?
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I thought these were jailbroken devices. As in, probably not new. Like, the neighbor upgraded, and unloaded his device for cheap. Or, maybe it was stolen. Or, it was found on the side of the road, and repaired. Or, it was bought as a present, and the recipient simply doesn't have any money with which to buy apps.
Just because someone has an iDevice, doesn't mean he paid upwards of a thousand dollars for it.
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There's nothing about jailbreaking that implies the device wasn't bought from new. No more than chipping a console.
And they don't cost upwards of a thousand dollars. Even without a contract and unlocked, iPhones range from $450 to $849, new.
Warranty (Score:2)
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Not wishing to burst your bubble but I watch a movie while another one is downloading. You do not have to stop your life and watch it download. It just does it while you sleep or work.
Re:Cost of Apps (Score:4, Insightful)
Much of it comes from the frustration of purchasing an app only to find out within the first few seconds of using it that it was a waste of money. (I was thinking specifically about business and productivity apps, but it applies to games and entertainment as well.)
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As with any purchase, you're a fool if you don't look at reviews before you buy.
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The reviews in Apple's App Store are horrible. There's no way for developers to respond to anything or even know who wrote that review, and people don't realize that (asking questions in reviews and giving one star because they don't get a reaction). Most reviews seem to be written by people who have an axe to grind or don't get the product at all. People who use the app regularly usually don't write reviews (why bother?). If the developer throws up an alert asking nicely for reviews, the result is that a l
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I'm also an app developer with apps on there. And I don't recognise your description. Before Apple limited reviews to only the people who'd actually purchased the app, the review system was hopelessly broken. But not now.
Sure, it's frustrating as a developer not to be able to respond to misguided reviews. But think about what it would be like if developers could respond... the review section would turn into a comments section. And we know from elsewhere on the internet how hateful they can become.
The proper
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Have you seen the Uselss mug [marco.org]? That doesn't come from nowhere.
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Of course, everyone's had or at least seen reviews like that. But if the app is well made, they fade into irrelevance next to the good reviews.
Think of it from the point of view of a customer: are you not going to buy because amongst the good reviews there's a few one star reviews from people that are obviously clueless?
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Should be true of cars and clothes, no?
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Cars, definitely.
Clothes is more of a what-you-see-is-what-you-get scenario. Unless I suppose you purchase on-line. In which case, for sure you should be looking at reviews.
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I've never understood the desire to pirate apps iOS (or Android/WP) apps. If I'm paying over £500 for the device, then logic dictates that I have enough disposable income to pay the going rate for apps.
One: one of the ways people with disposable income stay that way is by being circumspect about when and where they dispose of said income.
Two: most mobile apps are crap. They either don't work (for the purpose they are desired for) or work poorly, or the purpose turns out to be pointless. Many of those don't have demos available. Piracy provides a try-before-you-buy avenue. Sure, not everyone buys, even if they like the app. But there's still a "legit" reason to want to circumvent the payment system.
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It's matter of principle[...]I'll gladfully spend hours finding a way to get it for free than pay even 1p, even though a hour of my time is worth much more than that.
Don't look now, but I just figured out why you're not rich.
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And they'll steal anything not nailed down.
Centralization (Score:2)
we need 3rd party app stores not ones with Pirated (Score:5, Insightful)
we need 3rd party app stores not ones with Pirated apps but ones with say Content that is banded on other app stores, one that offer lower costs to dev's, one that let you have open-source software on them, ones with out API locks.
You can get firefox on Android but not on windows phone or ios.
More bad analogies (Score:2)
Thye figure if they keep using this analogy long enough, they will just hammer it intos
downloading a "pirate app" is not the same as stealing something from a department store.
Its the same as instead of buying something from a knockoff store, buying a rip off from china town.
I say, in return for this horrible misuse of the english language we associate the crimes of embezzlement, graft, corporate
Another Myth Gone (Score:2)
Its clear that Apple users do not want a walled garden, or limited to Apple store...or even that Apple does not have privacy, When an Apple developer attacked users recently, by naming and shaming them through their twitter posts, he also claimed a 75% piracy rate.
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.
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Honestly don't know how they were able to stay up for so long.
Would have been nice to see Apple focusing on shutting down services like these to protect their appstore ecosystem rather than using their patents to go after samsung, etc
yeah.. it's as if someone was running a warez repository with everything on steam with hosted servers and a custom client, far beyond what mere p2p announce sites do. compare it to megaupload for example and it's downright crazy it stayed online and megaupload got shut down.
the closing reasons seem a bit bullshit. it's probably more along the lines that it became too risky and expensive to run(and nobody with right mind would associate with it with their real names anyhow).
Why bother? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Interesting)
While not condoning software piracy, I don't think it is wise to repeat the myth that "Pirated software is chock-full of malware".
It is true that some pirated software has malware just as it is true that Windows has malware and some apps from the Apple or Android app stores have malware or may spy on you.
The point is that you need to trust the source and not just download random stuff. I don't know about the quality of the software from this web site (I've never heard of it) but presumably if it had malware, this fact would be outed quickly.
Linux and the other Unixes have a big advantage in that they have "repositories" for their software which are controlled and monitored carefully by the authors and the community and any malware is excluded or outed and fixed rapidly.
Alright. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Pirated software is chock-full of malware."
The software on Installous wasn't "pirated". It was copied. There is a real, significant, and LEGAL difference.
Frankly I am getting goddamned tired of seeing people do the RIAA's job for them by labeling copied software as "pirated" when it's not.
If you don't know the difference, LOOK IT UP.
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As a developer who works on software I'm curious -- why would you not pay for it, but steal it instead? If I've worked long and hard on my application, what exactly gives YOU the right to STEAL MY hard work? I put a lot into the software that I write and if I sell my software (sometimes I just release as open source) than why should you not give me what I ask for it? I'm not even forcing you to use my software.
Annual fee to run your own code (Score:2)
The simple fact is that there is way too much free software that does 99% of what I need already and/or I really just DON'T need it and I'd rather spend my money on something else.
Do video games as a rule fall into the "just DON'T need it" category to you?
I have kids, and they all have computers and tablets, but they don't have a CC or will I give them mine
Without a credit card, how did they buy the computers and tablets?
And since every highschool in my area has already implemented a computer programming course I expect by the time those kids hit 18+ they may have enough knowledge to put together their own software for specific needs as well
Until computer makers or operating system publishers start requiring the payment of an annual fee to run code you wrote on a device that you own. This is already the case for iDevices and for the Xbox 360 (where Apple got the idea).
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Or walk into an art gallery with a camera. You can search the web for your favourite painting and download a copy without anyone blinking.
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Archive/mirror? (Score:2)
Where can I get it?
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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.
It is, however, just as illegal.
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Yes, okay, sure. The strict definition of copying and theft aren't isomorphic. That's fine.
But the reason why there's even anything called 'Copyright Infringement' is because there's a general notion that one can make a creative work that's value is in the concept rather than the physical embodiment.
Elvis music had value beyond the disc it was printed on. (If that weren't true, people wouldn't have wanted so badly to listen to it.)
Physicality is not the be-all and end-all of this discussion. If you go and g
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You can follow that notion if you like. The notion I tend to follow isn't the promulgated one of compensation for conceptual thoughts. The original notion of copyright is buried in the history of the Vatican during the protestant reformation for control of the printing press and rapid dissemination o
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Not quite... because in the case of copyrighted content, the original doesn't possess exactly the same value after copying it without authorization. More specifically, by making an unauthorized copy, you have diminished the value of the control that the copyright holder is supposed to have over who is permitted to make copies of their works.
In fact, you haven't just diminished the value of the original work you even copied... you diminished the value of *ALL* works protected by exactly the same mechanis