What to do now? Raging? Nothing? Partying? Is it an accolade? Would you contact the filehoster to take it down? Can I technically detect within the app that I'm running on a jailbroken device?
Another option to help fight people pirating would be to offer a free version. Maybe limit how many things they can add to their list, and have it ad supported. The full version you pay for and gets unlimited items in their list.
If you do find a way to detect someone using a pirated version, instead of disabling the application, why not do something fun like create a "pirate theme" that gets applied so they know they've been busted. (The only drawback is if the pirate theme is awesome you might get people pirating it just to see what it looks like).
There's no sense in fighting pirating, it's never worked. As far as I know, no industry has had any real success stopping it. I say embrace it and try to use it to your advantage.
We pay for servers, we can't pirate them. I read articles from developers telling that most of their users are pirates. How could we use this situation to our advantage?
* Require simple registration and validate against app purchasers
* Make the app free and charge for premium features that work with the web-based back end
If something is priced reasonably and provides good value, users will pay for it. iOS buyer statistics are a great case study.
You really can't stop people from pirating your application, but you might be able to convert a few would-be pirates just by reaching out to them with your story. It's easy to steal a piece of software from a nameless entity, but it's much harder when there is a human element involved.
Going into "legal mode" rarely solves these problems because it just puts people on the defensive (and this is coming from a lawyer).
Because the alternative was that they wouldn't like it enough. There is no 'wanted it but didn't pirate it' option for bored, unethical hackers.
Here's the page for FileSonic: http://www.filesonic.com/report-abuse
Wupload: http://www.wupload.com/dmca
BitShare: http://www.bitshare.com/abuse.html
That won't stop the pirating, but it's something...
In order to pirate apps, you must jailbreak. But in order to jailbreak, you needn't necessarily pirate apps.
With luck, you can probably discover why people pirate your apps. Maybe due to price, or that your nearest competitor has a better user experience, etc.
You can try to fight it, by making your most used features something which needs App Store authorization, but I suspect that will just piss off your customers who already paid for it and they will start putting 1-star ratings in the App Store.
Perhaps paid-for import/sync of bookmarks with some other movie bookmarking service -- with something comparable to MyAnimeList [0]. Or ability to exchange movie bookmarks and comments with friends over FB or G+; if you make it go through your central server, you can collect some fees for such service.
They say you can't beat free (`pirated'), but `pirates' can't beat your free version either.
Compete on quality.
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Also - I came across http://getdenso.com/ a few days ago which appears to do roughly the same thing as your app - have you heard of them? I inquired with them for an API that I might utilize to bring a BlackBerry PlayBook app into existence, and I'd like to extend to you the same offer. If you've got an API I could use, I'd love to bring this functionality to my preferred tablet.
Also check this, there might be an udpate on iOS5 and you might be lucky.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/12/jailbreak-detectio...
We had our app pirated a few weeks ago, it didn't have any impact on the sales. People who pirate your app wouldn't buy it anyway I imagine. Unless it was really well-known and great - but then there's no chance of it not being pirated.
You can verify if the device is jailbroken, but as @wccrawford said couple of comments below - they might have paid for it. And I know many people using jailbroken devices and not pirating one thing.
Party! Your app was deemed worth pirating.
However you can still make some check, like to check if the path /private/var/lib/apt/ exists or not. Since many package managers for cracked apps are apt-based, you should be able to get most of jailbroken devices.
Sadly (afaik), no way to understand if your app on a device has been cracked or purchased.
You could also charge a small recurring service fee for accounts and then give the app away for free.
Of cause, it would be interesting to see how many people are using the pirated version of your app, if it can be achieved with little effort.
We have some free and some non-free apps in the store, and we've never given the piracy stuff a second thought. We were actually pretty stoked when we saw the first game pirated. It made us feel legit. ;-)
1 the pirate your app act tells you these things:
-in their geographical area fro some reason they cannot but it or the price might be too high
-they love your appMost of us here can not tell you not take legal action. However, can you turn this into conversions? I think you can.
On the android side I run into when I sell apps through non Google android Market stores as those do not have infrastructure of me checking a license api like Google Android Market does..the things above is my thought process and steps I will be using..