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Comment by kstenerud | Hacker News Reader

Most likely, their "piracy detector" was nothing more than checking for "MobileSubstrate" (a library present in all jailbroken phones) under the silly assumption that jailbroken = pirated.

Booby trapped software is NEVER a good idea. No matter how clever you think you are, you're not clever enough.

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What do you think of disabling IAPs if IAPCracker or IAPFree is detected?

That sounds good, as long as you don't go on the internet and talk shit about the user if it is detected.

Popping a message like this would be good: "Sorry, this section of the app is incompatible with IAPCracker. Please contact support if you have received this message in error."

The users will still post on your forum and claim they don't know what iapcracker is. and argue incessantly despite having crash reports that logged it in memory

But there are better ways of attacking fraudulent IAPs. Perhaps more effort, but certainly fewer false positives. http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/Networ...

Jailbreaking and installing those hacks is difficult enough that your losses from it are likely to be low. So the question comes down to what your motivations are. Money-wise, it doesn't make much sense to tack on any more anti-piracy measures than there are already. You'd effectively be working for pennies designing and implementing your schemes with the amount of revenue they'd likely generate vs your losses from goodwill in the inevitable anti-piracy screw ups.

Personally, I prefer the pragmatic approach to the idealist. It's far less stressful.

Well he didn't disable the app and he also didn't say something that wasn't technically true.

> How about we all stop using pirated iOS apps? I promise to stop. I really will. #softwarepirateconfession

If you have a jailbroken iPhone, odds are that you did so to pirate "iOS apps" and are hence a "software pirate". That sentence looks like it was carefully crafted to be correct and generalizable.

This is probably not good for the dev's PR though, because accusing customers of being criminals doesn't go down too well (Music/Film) - unless of course you are a lawyer (MPAA/RIAA) - then you make fat stacks.

I have a jailbroken phone and I don't use it to pirate. Cydia is an alternate app store for apps that Apple rejected. Jailbreaking is also a step to unlocking, which allows me to use my phone with my Softbank account when I travel to Japan. For those that fit these categories and use this dictionary app, the author has stepped right into the legal minefield of libel.

Collateral damage is not a justification for this.

I have a jailbroken iPhone, because I want SBSettings and Winterboard. That's it. I want to be able to skin my phone the way I want (it's mine, after all), and I want quick access to things like brightness and wifi on/off that doesn't require jumping through multiple menus in the Settings app.

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