Pirating Quantified

[Jeff Campbell]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/05/iphone-developer-shares-pirated-app-numbers-and-thoughts.ars' target='_blank'>http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2...nd-thoughts.ars</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"When Web Scouts, Inc. wrote its tank warfare game iCombat for the iPhone, the company put a few extra lines of code into the application. The code checked the size of the application's .plist and, if the files size differed from what it was when the company packaged the application, it would phone home."</em></p><p><em><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/at/auto/1242878027.usr105634.jpg" /></em></p><p>So by checking the .plist file size, they were able to tell how many of the apps had actually been pirated since this file changes in size when it is cracked. Then during a certain period of time they had the application "phone home" and report file sizes. Get this: they found that 74% of the games out there had been pirated, 74%! Comparing it during the testing period they found the ratio of pirated to legit games was roughly 4 to 1. Ouch. This is an interesting article on how they tracked it and what they found, as well as their perspective on what this means to their company.&nbsp;</p>

[Jason Dunn]

That's a sad statistic, and a sad indication of the state of the world. I used to think that piracy could be massively lessened by making the music/game/whatever cheap and easy to get, but it seems that doesn't apply to iPhone/iPod Touch owners. :( So few people respect the creators of content nowadays...they just take what they want because they can.

[Sven Johannsen]

I used to think that piracy could be massively lessened by making the music/game/whatever cheap and easy to get, but it seems that doesn't apply to iPhone/iPod Touch owners. :(
I think your intent was to indicate that the low cost of iPhone/iPod apps and this study, shows you were wrong about your belief that price would make a difference. Sounds like you were singling out the Apple crowd. I would venture to guess that the stats would be similar on most platforms. If you could do something like this across lots of platforms, I would be be curious if there was some correlation between types of software (and by extension, types of users), that fostered piracy.