Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"Despite a common perception that pirating music decreases sales, a new study published by Norway's Aftenposten this week suggests an opposite effect. Conducted by the BI Norwegian School of Management, the research finds that those between who frequently download music through file sharing services are 10 times more likely to buy music than those that cling only to legal purchases. It also notes that those between the ages of 15 and 20 are more likely to buy songs through download stores like iTunes than CDs."

Could someone please loudly call Bravo Sierra on this stupidity? Pirates buy more? Who the hell did this study? Pirate's Bay's Lawyers? And what are they buying? Did anyone even bother to ask that question?

I'm so sick of pirates justifying their behavior. Face it; you're stealing music. Justify it any way you want but if there's music on your iPhone or iPod that's for sale and you didn't pay for it, you stole it; end of story. And as for "buying more," that's a load too, because every swiped item on your iPhone / iPod is a song you didn't buy.

Next thing you know, we'll be hearing about how car thieves buy more cars.

"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 letting apps into the App Store, individual developers are severely limited in what they can actually do, code-wise, to address the issue."

I didn't realize pirating was such an issue at the iTunes App Store until I read this article. Some of the developers are reporting figures such as low as 20% legitimate users. This software from Ripdev works within the constraints of the SDK (they say) so it doesn't violate any of Apple's policies, by creating another shell a "pirate" would have to break through in order to get the application to work. Pricing seems kind of steep, setup fee of US $100 for apps costing less than US $9.99 and US $300 for apps costing more than US $9.99. And they charge a royalty based on number of sales after the initial setup fee is charged. Not sure how many developers are going to be interested in this, but if you do any kind of volume, this might actually keep more of the money in your hands.

"Crackulous was developed at Hackulo.us, a donation-supported forum dedicated to, well, stealing software. There's really no way to put a good spin on it. Crackulous is the brainchild of iPhone pirate Salad Fork, who notoriously called an early leak of his software "absolutely disgusting and downright insulting." Back in November, Mr. Fork became outraged when his pirating software was pirated and released without his consent or control. Today, he must be experiencing another wave of stress: the otherwise free Crackulous software has already been repirated and is being sold for ten bucks a pop in a new wave of poetic justice."

Wow. A piece of software designed for pirating gets pirated and the pirating software developer is annoyed that his app got pirated. It's this kind of utter insanity that makes the world go 'round, kids. This is as obviously hysterical as a car thief whose car gets stolen right off his own driveway. I won't ask the obvious question here, but instead I'll ask if you know anyone who's pirating apps for the iPhone? I'm not talking about stuff like Cydia; that stuff is legit in the sense that it isn't hacked or cracked software, but more like what these folks are doing.

"A new Trojan Horse is currently hidden in pirated copies of Apple’s iWork ‘09 available via various BitTorrent tracker sites, according to a marketing pitch, uh, report from security software manufacturer Intego. While the pirated software is complete and functional, the installer contains a “bonus” called iWorkServices.pkg. This software is installed as a startup item where it has read-write-execute permissions for root: in other words, it has all the powers of a system administrator. This malicious software connects to a remote server over the internet, alerts its maker that it has been installed and gives this person the ability to connect to the affected Mac remotely."

Frankly, if you're pirating software, I hope your damn computer blows up on you. I have no sympathy for people who pirate stuff, and frankly pirating an entire Office Suite that goes for $79 is even more ridiculous. Maybe that'll teach the "I want everything free!" folks that not everything can be free just because you want it to be so. Hopefully none of you fall into the "if I want it, I just take it" category.