Intercontinental Ballistic App Store | Hacker News Reader

Intercontinental Ballistic App Store

cringely.com

11 pointsrfreytag8 comments

"...it becomes nearly impossible to pirate that software without first hacking Apple’s data center in North Carolina."

I'm not sure he's correct about this. As I understand it, software downloaded through the App Store is rather easily pirated if you know what/where to copy it.

I think Apple is solving the problem from the opposite direction. Rather than try to prevent users from pirating software, they're A) making software prices far more accessible, and B) making the purchase and acquisition (download) of software ridiculously easy.

This is built upon the theory that people generally want to do the right thing. Apple has (more or less) proved this with the success of the iTMS. If given a good value proposition and low barrier of execution, most people will purchase their music legitimately. Having said that, there will always be pirates, but this same theory says that "pirates will be pirates", and they never would have bought the software to begin with.

If you can make your millions on legitimate users, why waste time crying over spilt milk? With the App Store, Apple is trying to bring to Mac software what iTMS and the iOS App Store brought to their respective markets.

Yup. The key to defeating piracy is giving value for the money and not putting any roadblocks in the way of legal acquisition.

Different people pirate games for different reasons. Some do it for the money, some do it because they just can't get the product, some do it because they can't get the product when they want it, some do it because they've been burned in the past and are covering their rear-ends, and others do it just because.

The last one is never going to be a customer. All the rest can be converted, if you're willing to flex far enough. (Some of the money-based problems can't be overcome without pricing yourself too low, though.)

In this day and age, the distribution problems are ridiculous. Steam sells a LOT of games because they can be downloaded at launch, instead of waiting for the mailman, standing in line at midnight, or just generally waiting on something. They even let you pre-load to save the download time as well.

I came in here to make the same point. I can attest first-hand that having software distributed by the app stores does not in the least make them pirate-immune.

All you need to do is disabling the receipt checking algorithm in the app, which, depending on the developer's talent and ingenuity, could be anything between trivial to pretty challenging.

> it becomes nearly impossible to pirate that software without first hacking Apple’s data center in North Carolina.

I'm not familiar with Final Cut X in particular, but most centrainsed "connect-to-our-server" software DRM services for digital downloads failed rather miserably in terms of stopping piracy. A few hackers will take it as a challenge and break it, while the so-called pirates will gladly grab their work for free instead of shelling out $299 for apple.

Assuming a piece of software cannot get pirated strikes me as naive. The only software that never gets pirated is either a) free or b) useless.

Exactly. Plus, from the comments there: "There are pirated versions of FCPX already up, and it’s not too difficult, it’s about switching one file to make it seem valid."

... That's what he thinks is 'nearly impossible'? Phone-home DRM has existed for years and only works marginally better (if at all) than regular DRM.

App Stores certainly won't stop piracy, as cleverly pointed out here and elsewhere. But that doesn't make the main point of the article invalid, which is that App Stores have changed and will still change the game even more.

These Cringely articles make me see the value in the HN filters people ask for periodically.

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