Android Software Piracy Rampant

bednarz writes "Pirating Android apps is a longstanding problem. But it seems to be getting worse, even as Google begins to respond much more aggressively. The dilemma: protecting developers' investments, and revenue stream, while keeping an open platform. Some have argued that piracy is rampant in those countries where the online Android Market is not yet available. But a recent KeyesLabs research project suggests that may not be true: 'Over the course of 90 days, the [KeyesLabs] app was installed a total of 8,659 times. Of those installations only 2,831 were legitimate purchases, representing an overall piracy rate of over 67%.... The largest contributor to piracy, by far, is the United States providing 4,054 or about 70% of all pirated installations...'"

Comments

Numbers need a reference scale

[mapkinase]

"Of those installations only 2,831 were legitimate purchases, representing an overall piracy rate of over 67%...."

What's the piracy rate on popular desktop , laptop (conventional PC) applications?

(In Russia, almost all of the software sold is unlicensed (it has been like that at least several years ago). Given that Russia is a populous country, floods US and other developed countries w/ programmers and generally is a flourishing business, one can only assume that Russian software market cannot be dismissed during this assessment.)

Re:Numbers need a reference scale

[GiveBenADollar]

I read the article and still have no idea how piracy rate is determined. Over at Keyslabs there is a writeup which covers licensing, but nothing showing how pirates are detected. Maybe it's to prevent the pirates from getting smart, but being closed about your statistics is worse than having no statistics at all. We have no way of validating the numbers against false positives so to counter I have embedded a script in this post which detects theft and have found that 95% of the people who read this are plagiarizing it for their own posts. There now we can all have statistics.

Re:Numbers need a reference scale

[CastrTroy]

I remember reading a blog post by 2D Boy, makers of World of Goo, that stated that they calculated a piracy rate of 90%. That's on an independent game, that only cost $15. It's a great game, and well worth the money. There's also absolutely no DRM on the game so there's no reason to assume that people are "pirating" because they need to get around copy protection for a game they already bought. They added corrections to the blog post, later, correcting the number to around 82%. So 67% doesn't seem all that bad in comparison.

Re:Numbers need a reference scale

[Anonymous Coward]

You made an informative comment about Russia? That's not the way we do things around here

Which means that it is the way they do things in Soviet Russia, proving that his post is authentic.

Re:Numbers need a reference scale

[varmittang]

They probably have some part of their game that connects to a server to post scores, or some code that phones home. But most likely its a score posting and during that connection they get a unique ID for that phone so you can over write your best score. But if 8,659 people send in scores, but only 2,831 purchases were made, they can determine that most likely there is a 67% piracy rate for their application. So, its a guess, but a very educated guess, and could actually be said to be the lowest their app is being pirated, in that it could be higher amount of people having it installed but are not phoning home.

Re:Numbers need a reference scale

[s73v3r]

However, this also ignores the simple fact that most of the people who pirated an app wouldn't have shelled out money for it.

If they weren't willing to pay for it, why should they get to enjoy/use it?

Re:Numbers need a reference scale

[tomhudson]

I'm not saying they should. What I *am* saying is that the "pirated app" numbers don't translate directly to anything else - not lost revenue, not even potential lost customers - some people pirate stuff just because they can, without even bothering to check first to see if it's something they might want.

Case in point - way back in the DOS days, a friend insisted I try simcity. I though the game concept was silly, but gave it a whirl. I went on to buy Simcity 2000, Simcity 3000 Deluxe, Simcity 4 + Rush hour, and Simcity for the Wii. I also bought a few other maxis games, all stemming from that one floppy.

However, if I had had to buy the original game first, none of those sales would have happened. Not one.

Some of us *do* want to reward publishers who produce good stuff - we just don't want to get sucked in by nice artwork and a bogus description that turns into an almost-immediate lunchbag letdown.

Re:Numbers need a reference scale

[Abcd1234]

However, this also ignores the simple fact that most of the people who pirated an app wouldn't have shelled out money for it.

I'm actually not convinced of that when you start taking micropayments into account.

Sure, for a game that costs $15, a user who pirates it might be doing it to save some money, and with the pirated copy unavailable, would simply have not bought it. But when you're talking a couple bucks, I find it *far* less credible that users are turning to piracy because they can't afford the purchase, or don't see the product as having sufficient value to justify the price.

Are you going to buy something if you can't at least kick the tires first?

Eh, as has been pointed out many times, the android marketplace has a 24-hour refund period. Combine that with user reviews, and I'm sorry, the try-before-you-buy justification for piracy just doesn't hold water.

And let's be honest - a lot of these utilities should eventually make their way into the OS anyway.

Oh, well, then that totally justifies piracy... ::rollseyes::

And Therein Lies the Rub

[eldavojohn]

The dilemma: protecting developers' investments, and revenue stream, while keeping an open platform.

From (note: there's no reason to read the article I'm about to link, it's badly laid out with terrible ads and I'll quote the title) another article:

Android Skins, "Crapware" Protected by Open Source Principles, Says Schmidt

Please note, I could not find where Schmidt said these exact words but there was some sentiment of this in his interview. And there's some truth to it.

Truth be told, I'm a little wary of applications on my Android based Motorola DROID. I have seen the skins apps and am curious how one maker gets licenses for Zelda, Minnesota Vikings, Justin Beiber and all other kinds of imagery when they sell these skins. This sort of questionable content makes me wonder what other questionable things are being engaged. Likewise, I'm also a little wary of a lot of the free games I play. One in particular is the Solitaire Free Pack which, as it so turns out, I am a big fan of the ~40 variants of solitaire they offer. I also would like to use the Kindle application on my phone. There's just one problem: it wants my Amazon account login and password.

You know, it's not that I don't trust Android, Google or Amazon ... it's the other apps I've unwittingly installed willy nilly on my phone while bored or drunk on the metro. You'll probably be able to assure me that there's no way another app could access the disk or memory space of the Kindle app but it just seems unsafe. I would not find iOS all that much more reassuring but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in the paranoia of storing account information inside my phone -- or even repeatedly typing it in.

I don't have any proof that it's a real security issue and I hope apps somehow get very restricted memory and disk spaces but I think Google has a little further to go on security as well as offering developers a way to recoup losses. Since it'll undoubtedly be DRM like their early attempts, I hope it's stressed to be opt-in and not advised.

Re:And Therein Lies the Rub

[bemymonkey]

One word: Permissions. There's a reason they're displayed every time you install an app...

Re:And Therein Lies the Rub

[c0d3g33k]

Right.

The permissions listings are about as opaque as they come. I've some experience with the soft white underbelly of technology, so I can make a good guess about what a particular permission entails and why it might be necessary, but I still can't quite figure whether an app is actually secure or not. And for many apps the list is quite long - not exactly user friendly or convenient. If I (after 20+ years of experience with computer technology) can barely make heads nor tails of the permissions, heaven help the butcher/backer/candlestickmaker who just wants to feels safe when installing an app on their phone. And I have the SDK installed and can actually read the details.

In a word, the permissions listings tell a person fuck-all about whether an app is actually safe or not. With a few exceptions. Apps that require no special permissions or just a very few, rare though they are, give one some sense of confidence. Internet connection required for a stock ticker app? Ok, can't be much harm in that. I'll install. Beyond that, as the list of required permissions grow, the difficulty in evaluating the safety of an app grows exponentially. Access to SD storage, personal contacts list, state of phone, location, yada yada. Most apps seem to require most of these. Access to SD storage is needed for reading/writing personal settings, caching data and the like. Fine. But is access to other data on the SD card limited? I have no clue. As far as I can tell, once an app has access the SD card, a full wipe is possible. There is little information to suggest otherwise.

So basically, for apps that require a non-trivial list of permissions to function, one is left with trust in the developer as the only security. The rest is a roll of the dice.

To be honest, I think most people treat the list of permissions much as they treat an EULA: a list of incomprehensible gibberish that one must ignore to get to the actual goal (an installed app, in this case). It's in the Google market, so it must be safe, right? Click, click, install.

Android app permissions as a way to assess the safety of an app? You've got to be kidding. Epic fail.

Do they?

[KillaGouge]

Do they mention the price of the app, what the app did, where they phones in the US with US numbers, where they foreign phones in the US, did they see how long the users leaved the app installed after they pirated, did any of the pirates later purchase the app, how long they did the study, or anything else that might actually be useful information?

Re:Do they?

[DerekLyons]

Translation: Did they give us any information that will give us any excuse to excuse the pirates?

Re:Do they?

[GiveBenADollar]

Translation: Did they give us any information that will give us any excuse to excuse the pirates?

This is not a fair statement. If the article had any facts to back up it's numbers then it would be a lot more believable. Just defending the article without questioning it is as bad as defending the pirates without looking at the cost to the developer. Lets agree to this: It's a bad article and proves nothing on it's own.

Need to make incentives..

[Darkness404]

Google along with the developers need to make incentives for purchasing "legitimate" copies of Android software. For one, it doesn't have a great "gift card" mechanism, yes, you can register a gift card as a Google Checkout card and it does work, but it isn't as seamless as buying an iTunes giftcard, typing in the number and seeing your balance at all times. Secondly, there are a crapload of Android apps that are overpriced, you can't expect someone to pay for essentially a tech demo or utility. Markets like the Android market give people a large ego into thinking that people -should- pay $.99 for a few images and sounds it took you a few hours to find on Google then make a quick program to organize them. And number three, a lot of apps simply don't work. Unless there is a free version equivalent to all the features of the paid version, no one wants to spend even $.99 on something that doesn't work then deal with the hassle of returning the application.

Re:Need to make incentives..

[f0dder]

Obligatory when talking about app prices: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/apps

Re:Why do they consider it piracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you own a jewelry store, it will be robbed. the very act of owning a jewelry store is tacit acknowledgment that you accept being robbed. companies that sell jewelry should accept this and consider alternative income methods like polishing jewelry or beet farming.

as long as jewelry stores think that their jewelry has monetary worth, they will continue to fight a losing battle to gun technology itself.

/ in other words, you are an idiot.

Kids these days?

[courtarro]

Android Market apps are mostly super cheap. Who can't afford $1 on a game they'll play for a few days non-stop? Or a few bucks on a ROM management app? Prices for most paid apps are so low that I imagine that the largest barrier to entry is not price, but the effort required to set up one or more credit cards. My hypothesis, for that reason, is that a large portion of the piracy comes from the age 15-20 crowd who have fancy phones and lots of free time to figure out piracy options, but no credit card(s).

Google can greatly reduce this kind of piracy by working out pricing deals with the carriers to allow charges to appear on phone bills. How else would the ringtone industry thrive as it has? Verizon certainly doesn't offer a direct-bill Android Market option. Maybe this is already the case on other carriers? How does piracy compare in those cases?

Another annoyance of the Market is currency conversion. I've bought apps for sale in both Yen and Euros, and for those purchases I had to set up a Visa card since my AMEX didn't support foreign purchases (on the Market, at least). Most users don't want to deal with that kind of crap ... again, piracy is easier. Can't Google Checkout handle currency conversion on the developer's end without hassling end-users?

Re:Kids these days?

[zombieChan51]

There's no way to get my quarter back after buying bubble gum, if I didn't like the flavor or it was to hard I'm screwed. Doesn't mean I should go and break the machine and steal all the bubble gum.

Re:Kids these days?

[kidgenius]

How is a ROM management app encouraging piracy? I use Koush's ROM Manager to install (and keep up to date), my install of Cyanogen Mod for my droid. Where's the piracy? Cyanogen had an issue with Google a while back, but they've both come to a reconciliation that works well for both parties, and no piracy of google's apps are taking place.

Re:Kids these days?

[KillaGouge]

If the apps are as broken as people have said, then 24 hours should be more than enough time to see that they are broken.

Re:Hire Americans, and they can afford things

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Otherwise, expect us to live our lives by any means necessary.

In what way is pirating an app necessary to living your life?

No wonder SaaS seems so appealing

[dave562]

It seems to come down to the inescapable fact that if you sell your code, it will be stolen and/or passed along to others. On the other hand, if you simpy put a paywall in front of your code and charge people for a subscription, you can avoid getting financially ass-raped by all of the cheap bastards out there.

When I was a kid heavily involved in the warez scene, I didn't really understand what the big deal was when people complained about piracy. Now that I work for a living and earn money using computers, I get it. Life is too short to go to work every day and crank out code, only to have it ripped off by some cheap bastard.

People seem to miss the fact that it takes time and effort to write code. If a person feels it isn't that difficult, they should do it themselves rather than steal from someone else. All of the defenses along the lines of, "It doesn't cost anything to reproduce, therefore it should be free for me." are a big fat load of crap. It amazes me how morally corrupt a good sized segment of our society is.

Re:No wonder SaaS seems so appealing

[bieber]

I find it difficult to believe that anyone has even stolen code from you...perhaps you mean copied? Lets be perfectly clear, so-called "piracy" is not stealing anything, it's violating a (theoretically) temporary monopoly that you've been granted by the government. Aside from that monopoly, you have absolutely nothing to do with two people copying data between their computers. You can argue that copyright protection is a necessary incentive to produce creative works in our society, but I don't believe---and a great many others agree with me---that those protections should extend to private copying in the digital era, and that stance does not make us "morally corrupt."

Consider this. I don't use proprietary software. I'll gladly pay for software, but not so long as the author is going to restrict what I'm allowed to do with it. So whatever software you may produce, am I not "stealing" just as much money from you by not using it as those who share it amongst themselves are by not paying you for it? Or are only some of the people who choose not to pay for your software "thieves," despite the fact that we all have exactly the same net effect on your pocketbook?

Re:No wonder SaaS seems so appealing

[bieber]

The reason the "digital segment of society" refuses to recognize that "intellectual property" isn't the same as regular property is that it is not, in fact, even remotely the same. You can make all the flawed analogies you want (heck, you can't even get in line with the normal trolls who want to analogize software as property, you seem to think that the thing you're trying to rationalize as if it were tangible property is best analogized as a service), but the bottom line is that software is not a physical product, and it is not a service in any conventional sense. It is completely and utterly different from any other economic product that mankind has ever produced. If you start your argument by trying to treat it as such, you're just showing your ignorance from the very start.

You do realize, don't you, that copyright infringement, theft, and theft of service are completely different, and that copyright infringement in most cases is not a criminal offense but a civil matter? If software is exactly the same as goods and services, then why is it subject to a completely separate set of rules and regulations? Do you really expect anyone to take you seriously when you can't demonstrate even a basic understanding of the way the law considers "intellectual property"?

Now, if you want to be sensible about this, you should try making some reasonable arguments about economic incentives to justify crippling the ability of society at large to copy data freely amongst themselves for the benefit of the smaller segment of society that produces that data in the first place. It helps if you refrain from making ridiculous analogies and calling everyone who disagrees with you an idiot...

Re:Why do they consider it piracy?

[mjbkinx]

Thank you for your advice. Since I don't believe I can interest you in a support contract for my jump and run game, I'm going to plaster it with ads as an alternative source of income.

Is revenue still increasing?

[Hatta]

Piracy rate is meaningless. You can have a 0% piracy rate easily, just don't release your app. The only thing that matters is revenue. You're better off having 1000 paying customers and 1,000,000,000 pirates than you are having 100 customers and no pirates at all.

Re:Software is not a physical item

[Shakrai]

But software is infinitely reproducible for next to no cost

Too bad it's not "infinitely developable" for next to no cost.

Re:Those numbers mean nothing

[Shrike82]

Not every pirated copy is a lost sale. I can't stress that enough.

What about the ones that are lost sales though? Should they be ignored? What about the ethics of it? Should people enjoy the fruits of your labour for free when you've made it clear that you want to be paid for them?

Re:Hire Americans, and they can afford things

[CarpetShark]

In what way is pirating an app necessary to living your life?

What? You're on slashdot, and don't understand that software can become necessary, and that some people might not be able to afford it? Here's a tip: you're in the information age, and this need is exactly why a lot of us donate software to the free software community.

I'd probably be an alcoholic in the slum I grew up in, if not dead, if it wasn't for free software (and yes, pirated software) giving me opportunities I never had otherwise. There's a reason why people on sites like TPB rally together when attacked. Yes, software is necessary in modern life. Yes, sometimes pirating it is necessary too. Although thankfully a lot less lately, thanks to Open Source.

Really, sites like TPB are the modern equivalent of libraries that lend books to people would couldn't afford to buy them. They should be praised and donated to, not targetted. And that's why people DO donate to them.

Re:What about the iPhone

[Penguinisto]

Thing is, you already mentioned why it's not as big of a deal on the iPhone... jailbreaking isn't something you see a whole lot of (tech media notwithstanding).

Most folks either don't know how to jailbreak an iPhone, or don't want to risk bricking the thing (and therefore blowing the $$$ they have tied up in phone and contract). Sure - you and I know it's fairly easy and safe to do, but Joe PhoneUser doesn't know that, and they have actual money tied up in the beastie before they even get it out of the box it came in.

Given this, the majority will buy the apps from the store. Now if jailbreaking were uber-common, then yeah - pirating apps would be just as common. Otherwise, overall? It's pretty self-evident that piracy is going to be an Android (and WinMo, and Symbian) thing.

From a developer's POV, yeah - the piracy rate w/ iPhones is going to be a lot lower, and therefore more lucrative for the dev. OTOH, the dev will miss out on folks trying the product out, and on any of the marketing bennies that piracy can give his products.

Re:Hire Americans, and they can afford things

[D Ninja]

What? You're on slashdot, and don't understand that software can become necessary, and that some people might not be able to afford it? Here's a tip: you're in the information age, and this need is exactly why a lot of us donate software to the free software community.

While I agree with you that there is definitely good reasons for FOSS, and I am extremely appreciate of efforts of the FOSS community - we're not talking about the same problem. If you are already sporting an Android phone (where the phone costs ~$200 and the price per month is ~$70 - $120), you can afford a $1.00 app. It's not even close to the same situation.

Re:Hire Americans, and they can afford things

[eltonito]

Your comparison of TPB to a library overlooks the fact that the library (each individual library system, actually) purchases/liscenses/contracts the content they lend. TPB finds someone else who has purchased/liscensed/contracted content and takes it without having contributed anything to the authors/owners who created it. They do this at a scale that dwarfs the content cycle of a single library system.

The assets of a library also come with limitations (return dates, access limitations, DRM, content expiration dates) which would require a user to purchase the content if they want unfettered, indefinite access to the content. A pirated version of software and other pirated content has no such limitations and there is significantly less incentive for a pirate to convert to a legitimate copy.

You can certainly rationalize and encourage theft by playing the "poor people should have expensive stuff too" card, but most librarians would cringe at your argument. I'm all for helping people out and for free access to information, but if you want to own something (and I'm sorry, but unless you are getting firmware for a pacemaker, software is a want) you buy it. If you can't afford it you don't buy it or you find an alternative you can afford. Amazing how that works, ain't it?

Re:Hire Americans, and they can afford things

[RightSaidFred99]

What laughable bullshit. Software is not necessary unless you're talking medical, car safety, etc... There is literally no software that you need on your phone to survive.

You're drawing some non-existent parallel between jobs in software and optional, "fun" software.

Like people "need" to download some shitty movie off TPB, or they "need" to download a game.

Utterly ridiculous, and what makes it more ridiculous is in how earnest you are in shoveling that absolute horse shit.

What a fucking entitlement society we have turned into.

Re:Why do they consider it piracy?

[Kijori]

Thank you for your advice. Since I don't believe I can interest you in a support contract for my jump and run game, I'm going to plaster it with ads as an alternative source of income.

And many of the same people that claim that the reason for piracy is that the prices are too high will then download the hacked, ad-free version. Because the problem isn't anything to do with the software - the software is both desirable and desired. The problem is that once people have grown accustomed to the idea that they can get an unlimited amount of digital content for free, without the inconvenience of advertisements and without any real probability of legal consequences, it is almost impossible to get them to start paying again.

Re:Hire Americans, and they can afford things

[Americano]

I understand what you're getting at, though I have to admit that I'm fairly unsympathetic to this argument.

My desire to have something doesn't automatically confer on me the right to take the product of someone else's efforts without paying.

I'd also suggest that "keeping up with the Joneses" is not exactly a situation where "NEED" truly applies.