Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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.
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.
I'm left to wonder how he 'discovered' it in the first place...
A few months ago Dmitry Chestnykh, the founder of Coding Robots and copyright holder of Mémoires, discovered that his program – like many others – was being shared via The Pirate Bay.
So while he was looking for a cracked Photoshop, for example, he was amazed to see his own stuff up there? It's rather like a priest complaining about poor service from a prostitute, isn't it?
I do google searches for my name and the names of the program I write all the time. It seems logical to me that he saw his program listed on pirate bay while doing something similar.
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
And yet now, just as back then, the people who trade said copies are the people most passionate about it and who are more likely to buy music. The argument of the big labels is that there's no reason to buy music when an exact digital copy can be had for free - maybe they underestimate the talent of their artists that they could make people want to reward them regardless, or maybe they underestimate the passion of the fans who are more than happy to buy stuff but also like to share music with their friends and hear new stuff for free, but the end result still seems to be that the ones they are most demonising for downloading are their core customers.
1. Develop app
2. Crack the app then distribute it
3. Send hilarious email to pirate bay
4. ???
5. PROFIT!!
Mod parent Flamebait.
Seriously, how do you know it was file sharers that killed sales of your "consumer" software? Were there any other factors taken into account when determining sales history? What software was it? Was it well-known? If so, there should be plenty of information about it online. If not, perhaps your problem was that you were marketing to a niche. If so, did you sell to most of the customers that were actually interested? Did you attempt to make up for a small number of customers by jacking up the price? Hell, do you even have any statistics on crack releases that provide even the most basic support for your position?
You're right that fighting the pirates is pointless, but your bit about how pirates think everything must be free is just trolling. The idea is that digital files can easily be replicated and distributed to anyone with a computer and Internet connection, and that this is of obvious benefit to the public. You seem to be under the impression that most file sharers don't give a damn about creators and are just selfish thieves. You couldn't be any more wrong. Crack and scene groups will often encourage downloaders to buy the media if they like it, to support artists. There've been plenty of suggestions that people who use p2p buy more because they are the big fans, and studies done on the subject to provide support. And if there are so few people interested in paying for media, why is Hollywood pulling in record profits each year? Why haven't the music, software or video game industries completely tanked within the last decade? Why is iTunes massively successful despite the abundance of free music online, both legal and illegal?
Mindless anti-piracy nonsense is still nonsense. I'm tired of people using file sharers as scapegoats when their media doesn't sell.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
This is what confuses Windows users.
This is what Mac users trot out every time anyone points out flaws in MacOS. No, I don't think that the plus sign means add because I am a Windows User. I have been using computers all the way back to the KIM-2, long before the IBM PC was even thought of, much less Windows, so I am not 'confused' because I am a 'Windows User'. Deficiencies in MacOS are not somehow Windows fault.
Mac's UI is so unintuitive that even Mac Users don't know what the buttons do. Just this week on another thread, a Mac user was insisting that the green plus was 'size to document'. Your description is closer, but I only had to get to the second default installed application (Calculator) before I found that the green button did not toggle between user and default screen sizes. Of course, even if it did, a green plus means ADD. It doesn't mean ADD because of Windows. Windows doesn't have a green button. It means Add because when you have red, yellow and green, green means GO, and a plus always means ADD. The Macs behavior is simply wrong. Don't even get me started on the red X that sometimes closes the program, and sometimes doesn't.
As for the trash can. Having the icon change is a poor attempt to make a huge UI blunder look like it wasn't really a mistake. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that putting the delete and the eject drop point at the exact same place is a monumentally dumb idea. It is simply asking for a mistake. Heck, even the attempt at hiding their mistake brings more inconsistency to MacOS. Sometimes that icon is the trash, but depending on what you click on, sometimes it will change to an eject button. Make sure you know whether that icon on your screen is a volume, a regular file, or a file that is mounted as a volume, because the difference is the difference between, 'this file is so important that you want to take it with you', and 'I never want to see this file again'.
It is rationalizing like yours that will keep MacOS from getting significantly better.