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Developer Demands Pirate Bay Not Remove Torrent
An anonymous reader writes "This week TPB got a very unusual e-mail. It was a 'Notice of Ridiculous Activity' from a company that had found one of its apps cracked and listed as a torrent on TPB. The app in question is called Memoires, developed by Coding Robots. Memoires is marketed as the easiest way to keep a journal on your Mac. It costs $29.99 to buy after you've enjoyed a 30-day free trial. That, of course, didn't stop someone from cracking the software and making it available for free as a torrent. Dmitry Chestnykh, founder of Coding Robots, noticed the cracked torrent and decided to download it to see what had been done. After using it, he was upset — not because the cracked version was available, but because the cracker (named Minamoto) had done such a bad job of cracking it. The best section of the e-mail has to be this: 'I demand that you don't remove this torrent, so that people can laugh at Minamoto and CORE skills. However, I also demand the[sic] better crack to be made, so that it doesn't cripple the user experience of my beautiful program.'"
Developer Demands Pirate Bay Not Remove Torrent
Translation:
Developer Demonstrates Cutting Edge Advertising Techniques
My work here is dung.
Where CORE meant something, they used to be known for the highest quality cracks, ones that worked and worked well. Sadly, that day was some time in 2001
Many people (including myself, hint hint) wish that their work was popular enough to show up on torrent networks.
You aren't anyone unless your stuff is available in a torrent.
Living With a Nerd
Probably right, but now I want to buy it just to support that kind of chutzpah (or however you spell that word).
Translation:
Probably right, but now I want to prove that you are right by reinforcing his behavior with cash tendered and also he is badass and I wish to make babies with him.
Quite the PR campaign a developer started. Good to see small companies stepping it up on all fronts.
My work here is dung.
Someone's playing the publicity card pretty damn good.
There's no patch for stupidity
I'm sure someone will get right on that...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
why _would_ someone include an .exe file for a cracked Mac program? :\
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
The pride in his work is admirable. I always appreciate a developer who's concerned about his user experience. This characteristic is, to me, Steve Jobs' most admirable trait (though I think marketing geeks must appreciate his gift for generating interest in his products.) This guy is following Jobs' finest example here.
At least hes taking it in stride and realizing that you can't fully protect your software. Its better than trying to sue them for millions and looking like an ass.
This man just made my day. I'm glad to see he realizes that you can't stop people from moving around data, and he is willing to work with, not against it, in true hacker spirit.
Isn't it "Mémoires" not memories?
This may destroy any future copyright case he could have in a court of law.
A German court (for example) has ruled that a small developer who advertised his products as "DRM free" accepts/encourages piracy and as such has much less options when fighting copyright violations.
As the software developer, isn't he in a position to release a (by definition) perfect "crack" for it?
...the program in question is not called "Memories". If you RTFA, it is clearly called "Mémoires".
The ORIGINAL developer has posted more info here!
i mean, doesnt anyone else agree with me this is pretty crappy journalism?
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Compact Cassette is an analog audio storage medium that filled much the same role that MP3 and Vorbis audio files fill now. It was also used for data storage on home computers circa 1980, with various inefficient modulations, before floppy disk drives (the predecessor to USB flash drives) became affordable to home users.
Metallica appreciated trading copies of amateur concert recordings but not copies of the studio CDs.
Heh. He *demands* a better crack to be made. Why doesn't the developer just build a freeware version and post the torrent to that?
Oh yeah... That route wouldn't have gotten all the free advertising.
how interesting: that a demand to maintain the efficacy of an object created by man must be framed as a ridiculous idea.
at the heart of it, seems like the guy just wants to maintain integrity of an idea.
1. Develop app
2. Crack the app then distribute it
3. Send hilarious email to pirate bay
4. ???
5. PROFIT!!
Still a Mac program (though maybe keeping a journal in 2010 is considered acceptable activity to the Starbucks hipsters who own iMacs?). Too bad it wasn't made for a useful OS.
TFA didn't link to the original Reddit article. The original one is here.
And that thread's comments have multiple serious discussions going on.
And the discussions rival the quality found in Slashdot.
If I had a mac I would buy this program even if I didn't need it. I love this article. :)
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."
Once it is out there, the free version will pretty much take over. There are so few people that are interested in paying - even if it means better quality - that it is best to just think about moving on.
Fighting the pirates is pointless. They have access to better tools for promotion than legitimate small businesses do, so the free version is going to almost always come up first on searches. It will be linked to by every hacker/wares forum that exists. Anyone asking "where can I get something that does X" will be responded to with a link to the pirate version, or the words "use the google".
Once our consumer software got hit by thieves we saw retail sales drop sharply. In this case "thieves" is the only think to call people that purchase the software with stolen credit cards so it can be posted on free download sites.
Face it, people want stuff for free and there are plenty of people out there that agree with that mindset. All software should be free and we should all be supported by the government so we don't have to beg for money or work as slaves. Food should be free. Houses should be free - what possible right does someone have to deny people a place to live?
If you don't think piracy is political, you haven't thought about it long enough.
Bought a product from him just because of this awesome keep-up notice.
Somehow we've gone from a mentality that supported the individual, creativity and hard work it takes to produce something into a strange sense of self-entitlement where "information wants to be free" and we all want something for nothing.
And lately there has been this big jump from that mentality to this "us" vs. "them" ideal where if someone is dismayed by a $29.99 app created by a developer on his own time is cracked, they are then copyright nazis akin to Microsoft, et. al. Which is a moral stance that is taken only to justify your own self entitlement.
Sorry, true "hackers" wouldn't have cracked and stolen the app. If they couldn't have paid for it or thought the price was egregious, they would have made their own and open sourced it. Anything else is simply greed, the greed of wanting something for absolutely nothing.
What is the bottom line here? The "hacker spirit" screwed some little guy out of recouping costs for his work.
You can take your "Hacker Spirit" and shove it.
CORE , isn't that those who put malwares in their cracks?
Listening to the start of Lotwotl (and now downloading in a separate tab), I wonder if you've heard of Surrent / Banco de Gaia / Tomas Dvorak (damn /. for not allowing proper Unicode...) / Tortoise / Aerial M / Hobby (full disclosure -- Hobby is my brother) / etc...
Thanks to your link, I'm poking around the LastFM site, and am happily surprised to find almost all these groups listed.
In quite a different direction musically, there's the harder-to-find Swedish group Nordic. I've usually heard the term "power trio" used to refer to a bass and two guitars, or a bass, guitar, and drums; these guys have a nyckelharpa, cello, and mandolin.
Anyway, have fun!
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
He needs to greatly improve his marketing effort if he plans to increase the sales of his app. After looking at his demo video there is no way I would pay 30 bucks for this. The only feature that intrigued me was the data extraction of phone numbers and street addresses. But I'm beginning to suspect that he's just leveraging some OS X framework for that, like the spell checker.
Seriously, a Mac application with an integrated spell checker. Fucking brilliant! Stop the presses!
Free Manning, jail Obama.
By that reasoning I'm not somebody unless nude photos of me are scattered around the internet.
This man obviously loves his work more than the money it pays. This man is quite the Philosipher if'n you ask me. I mean, who would ask for a new, better cracked version? Bad business management, great philosophy.
I know if people want my program, most won't pay for it so they'll just steal it. That's why I give it away for free and will take donations! lol
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
"I also demand the[sic] better crack to be made, so that it doesn't cripple the user experience of my beautiful program."
Why doesn't he simply release a version with no limitation. He could create a torrent and he would have exactly what he wants.
It is just a marketing gimmick.
Who's being ripped off? The copyright holder? They're only being "ripped off" insofar as a download is a lost sale. Otherwise the p2p user is gaining something at nobody's expense. Only someone who is extremely greedy for control and profit would argue that this is a bad thing.
Before file sharers should have to justify their positions and actions, first the big copyright corporations and anyone else pushing for strong copyright law needs to justify the existing law. The question is not "Why is it okay to download something for free?" but rather "Why is it okay to restrict people from sharing information with one another?"
Name one. Seriously. Name one small business or independent creator who has been unable to make a living from their work because of file sharing. Never mind that you're completely ignoring the fact that it's these small businesses and independent creators that benefit the most from p2p, as it spreads awareness of their works and builds up a larger fan base than they'd otherwise have.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
by demanding the cracked (read: free) program stay up, he is basically giving it away for free and cannot complain about it being cracked.
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