Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

"My iOS app is being pirated. Over 90% haven't paid for it. What can I do?"

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 104 posts

Re: "My iOS app is being pirated. Over 90% haven't paid for it. What can I do?"

#71

Post by bruceboughton »

Goladus wrote: post #18
teamonkey wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm definitely one of those "The people that pirate your software, never would have bought it in the first place" believers. I think that's only true for X% of the people who pirate. Pro-piracy groups like to assume X=100% (that people who pirate would never be persuaded to purchase a copy), anti-piracy groups assume that X=0% (that every pirate can be persuaded to purchase a copy). The truth is that X is probably…

> The truth is that X is probably somewhere in between. X depends a lot on the particular piece of software, the target market, and the context in which it's available. There won't ever be any generalized data. One interesting test would be to offer an app for a ridiculously low price, like $0.01 and see how many people don't bother to pay even that.

Isn't this the ad-supported model? ;)

Re: "My iOS app is being pirated. Over 90% haven't paid for it. What can I do?"

#72

Post by Derbasti »

w1ntermute wrote: post #70
sandGorgon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the big reasons that China or India (which might be linguistically closer) is not a hotbed for Linux innovation is because of the linux leadership. Hold more conferences here, incorporate features required for a non-Roman script market and see it explode. FYI - every known computer maker sells OS-free machines: both because the local piracy driven market demands it and that a lot of people use Linux as an alte…

> incorporate features required for a non-Roman script market Nobody in India uses computers in Indian languages. Everything's in English, and when people do write in an Indian language, it's using a bastardized, improvised romanization. So non-Roman script support is a non-issue.

Is that true? How interesting! How do you know this? Do you live in India?

Re: "My iOS app is being pirated. Over 90% haven't paid for it. What can I do?"

#73

Post by Derbasti »

schrototo wrote: post #67

Judging from the other comments here this may be a surprisingly unpopular opinion, but if you're pirating an app that costs one fucking dollar you should be ashamed of yourself.

Also, if you are cheap enough to fret about one fucking dollar, you probably would not buy it if you could not pirate it.

Re: "My iOS app is being pirated. Over 90% haven't paid for it. What can I do?"

#74

Post by bad_user »

_3u10 wrote: post #69
bad_user wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but small software companies and freelancers are NOT Microsoft. Windows and MS Office are software packages that you just use for years and years, probably for a lifetime. Once you're hooked, it's hard to switch. You cannot really compare Windows and MS Office with a game for which you lose interest in 2 weeks. Your business or other endeavors are not really depending on that game. Also, Microsoft has enough po…

I guess you've never read the Open Letter to Hobbyists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists The best thing to do is estimate the number of users and use it in the marketing. (eg. instead of 200 copies sold, say 2000 users, etc)

I don't think a letter from 1976 best represents Microsoft's strategy from the 90ties or from today.

Re: "My iOS app is being pirated. Over 90% haven't paid for it. What can I do?"

#75

Post by rmc »

sandGorgon wrote: post #58
aneth wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Piracy is the best thing that ever happened to Microsoft. If DRM worked, China - unable to afford Windows- would be a massive base of innovation for Linux desktops, and ultimately undermine Microsoft. If copyright were strongly enforced, nobody there would know what Louis Vitton is - instead it is now home to their most profitable store. Piracy is great marketing. Better even than free. You have distribution…

One of the big reasons that China or India (which might be linguistically closer) is not a hotbed for Linux innovation is because of the linux leadership. Hold more conferences here, incorporate features required for a non-Roman script market and see it explode. FYI - every known computer maker sells OS-free machines: both because the local piracy driven market demands it and that a lot of people use Linux as an alte…

I've been to parts of Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia) promoting Linux. Except for Ethiopia all languages there are written in ASCII, and English (or French) is sometimes the official state language and commonly spoken. However Windows is still massively used and massively pirated.

Re: "My iOS app is being pirated. Over 90% haven't paid for it. What can I do?"

#76

Post by loxs »

Derbasti wrote: post #72
w1ntermute wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> incorporate features required for a non-Roman script market Nobody in India uses computers in Indian languages. Everything's in English, and when people do write in an Indian language, it's using a bastardized, improvised romanization. So non-Roman script support is a non-issue.

Is that true? How interesting! How do you know this? Do you live in India?

I live in Bulgaria. The official script here is Cyrillic. Although all OSs support Cyrillic, the vast majority of users use the so called 'shlyokavitsa' - using ASCII to write in Bulgarian, which (as expected) is not very suitable for the purpose. The result is extremely low quality (and hard to read) text. And yet, this is probably 90% of the talk in chats, facebook and other venues where 'ordinary' people interact. I have friends who are Arabs and they do the same (though, they at least have a good excuse as computers around here don't have Arabic keys). I have no reasons to believe that the situation in India is any different. Some countries go even further, and make Latin their second official script. This is the situation in Serbia at the moment (Cyrillic and Latin).

Re: "My iOS app is being pirated. Over 90% haven't paid for it. What can I do?"

#77

Post by wccrawford »

dendory wrote: post #50

Wait, 90% of users pirating it? I just don't buy it. How many iPhone users jailbreak their phones? 5%? less probably? So those few users are 90% of your user base? These numbers just don't seem right. I would bet the real reason he saw a peak of traffic is something else. He bases his conclusions on how many people click a button, which presumably loads a URL on his server. It could be something as stupid as Google h…

It's not 90% of iPhone owners. It's 90% of the people using his app.

In other words, 90% of his 'customer base' is people who wanted to try it for free, or didn't find it worth paying for, or wouldn't pay for it anyhow.

It's a red herring. It's making him think more people want his app than really do... At least, at the price he's asking.

Re: "My iOS app is being pirated. Over 90% haven't paid for it. What can I do?"

#78

Post by Tycho »

For a seond I thought he was selling a distributed denial of service attack app. Anyway, avoid clicking this if you don't want to get into one of those stupid 'piracy isn't stealing' arguments with people who make them totally po-faced as if it hadn't been said ten million times already.

Re: "My iOS app is being pirated. Over 90% haven't paid for it. What can I do?"

#80

Post by jeffool »

I'd like to point this out:

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy

To quote:

The highest estimate I've seen is that 10% of worldwide iPhones are jailbroken. Given that there are so few jailbroken phones, how can we explain that 80% of game copies are pirated?

The answer is simple -- the average pirate downloads a lot more games than the average customer buys. This means that even though games see that 80% of their copies are pirated, only 10% of their potential customers are pirates, which means they are losing at most 10% of their sales.

Post reply on HN