I mostly agree with the blog post but some additional thoughts: 1) Google just opened up paid apps in more countries. There's potential to turn current pirates into legit users. However if they're already used to downloading your app from the pirate sites then even after you release an update they might not even both getting it from the Market. Unless they can't get it from the pirate sites right away.
2) In my experience, the way Android piracy works is that people get APKs using the 15 minute period, then they run the APK through the easily available LVL removing tool, then they post the APK. They're doing this so frequently and so fast that they DON'T EVEN TEST THE APK before posting. My app used to crash within 10 seconds of launch due to something happening in the LVL removing tool. I had tested the tool before publish and knew about this, but figured hey that means people won't use the tool. Now I know better, such a setup means getting a whole lot of emails from users complaining that it crashes as soon as they open it. So instead I do a really simple check to see if the LVL removing tool was used and if so I finish the activity and launch the Market. By hand a person could find and remove this check easily, but now when people blindly run the tool at least I won't get emails complaining about crashes. My point is that in order to make it inconvenient to pirate, you need your LVL to sneak past the tool. Worrying about a human cracking your app is less of an issue as by the time one does that the app has likely been out for a while and you have an update almost ready. But if the tool works then it can be on all the pirate sites nearly instantly after you release an update. -Kevin On May 12, 2:34 am, Zsolt Vasvari <zvasv...@gmail.com> wrote: > >http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/05/final-answer-for-what-to-do-to... > > I totally agree with that blog post. I believe the vast majority of > users, at least for non-trivial apps, resort to piracy not because > they are too cheap to pay for it, but because the app is not available > in the country they live in and have no choice but to pirate. > > This is exactly the same reason why a lot of people download new-run > TV shows using torrents. It has nothing to with being too cheap to > pay a buck for a show, but the simple fact is that they are not given > an option. Hulu is not available outside of the US and the 6-12 month > delay is unacceptable to a lot of people. But I digress... > > I believe when the Android Market is finally made available in those > additional 99 (really?) countries, things will improve. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
