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Android Game Devs Worry Over Ease of Copying
The Guardian reports on problems faced by game makers on Android Market. Some independent developers are finding that their games are too easily copied and sold by competitors, and they say Google isn't reacting quickly enough to reports of infringement. Quoting:
"One of my customers emailed me three weeks ago, and informed me that another company was selling a version of my app – pirated and uploaded as their own. Of course I contacted Google right away. It took Google two days to take the app down. This publisher was also selling other versions of pirated games. I contacted the original developers of those games but they were still being sold a week later. You'd think [Google] might have a hotline for things like that! I would also note that the publisher selling the pirated games is still trading on the Android Market. They didn't even get their account suspended. ... Why are these accounts still allowed to be trading? It's negligent as far as I'm concerned."
Even to piracy.
how the person who feels he is being victimized here would feel if his app was instantly removed via a hotline telephone call by someone with a false DMCA claim?
At the end of the day, it's all about whether they're selling more ads or increasing the value of them. Android is just another means to that end, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that Google has trouble policing their market place. It's simply not something they're used to doing. Same goes for Apple and Microsoft.
Google, like Apple, have to review the alleged infringement thoroughly before they can decide to take any action. If they don't, they run the risk of removing a legitimate app that was reported by a competitor, or a troll, or for any number of reasons. This is bad for business, and bad for PR. Unfortunately these investigations take their time, and even though you can throw more people into the pool of investigators, the final resolution is never going to be quick enough for app developers who want the infringing app remove IMMEDIATELY as it potentially costs them sales.
That's criminal copyright infringement. If it's for commercial gain, and the total retail value exceeds $1000, and distributed over a computer network, the criminal provisions apply. At $2500, it becomes a felony.
Here's how to report it.
Of course all the software through it is free (as in freedom).
If I am doing something wrong, please let me know, but browsing the market is absolutely painful. My biggest problem is the fact that you can go to a top category like "Business" and you are limited to THREE filters, "Top Paid", "Top Free" and "Just In". They are all irrelevant for me, because cost is not really an issue for under $20 apps, and "Just In" can list anything from first release betas to minor updates. Searching for a specific term is even worse because then you can't apply any further filters. As a related issue, when browsing categories or searching specifics, apps seem to be listed at random.
I would like to be able to sort apps by rating, developer, price, date uploaded, number downloads, and a whole bunch of other criteria. You know, stuff that I take for granted while searching through Google. You would think that the leading search company would be capable of implementing more than a rudimentary market application...
There are three explanations.
First, I could be incompetent. This is very likely, since I got my first Android phone less than a week ago. However while I'm not a developer, I am not exactly computer illiterate. I was able to unlock and root my HTC Desire, and I already tried 4 different ROMS (currently running Cyanogenmod 7 nightly 22) and a few dozen apps. My last phone was a Nokia N900, and its repository system automatically contained only free, and mostly GPL apps searchable on a variety of criteria. The Market was a very negative culture shock for me. If however I am incompetent, I welcome any suggestions how to better search for apps THROUGH THE MARKETPLACE (I'll come back to this in a second).
Second, Google engineers are inept and can't implement better searching in their own market app. I seriously doubt it, given the extensive features of any other Google app. FFS, think of the analysis Google Goggles, Voice Search or even Maps have to perform, while Market can't even sort apps properly? If the phones themselves are too slow, offload the computing to the Google servers just like Goggles and Voice Search.
Third, it's in Google's interest to force users to browse hunderds of apps, try out a lot of garbage before finding what they are looking for. This also ties in with TFA. Maybe Google wants the bragging rights to say they have hundreds of thousands of apps. Maybe they don't care, but the OP is not the first developer to complain about copied apps. One ADW theme designer stopped releasing the template for his themes because people were copying them and reselling them throu the Market. This is a very serious issue for Google, because Balmer was right. DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS! If they start bailing out, your platform dies out, which incidentally is what happened to my Nokia N900.
The ONLY reliable way to find Android apps is to either search through Google's site that we all use, or go to specific Android development forums like XDA and search past threads.
This is not just copyright infringement. This is plagiarism and misappropriation. Criminals are claiming other's work as their own. And they are capitalizing on this fraudulent claim to take money that should go to the real authors. This is quite different from random persons copying songs. This is actual theft.
Be careful with the terminology. Big Media likes the conflation of plagiarism and counterfeiting with mere copying. They want to be able to hit someone who snagged a copy of some tune off a P2P service with the same punishment as these software thieves deserve.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Android is garbage. I'm holding on for GNU/Hurd.
As a business, setting up a public marketplace is about the marketplace, not about the policing. Policing is secondary -- way secondary. There's zero profit in policing the marketplace for Google. There's simply no money to be made. None, until it becomes so rampant that developers like you stop using the marketplace as a result.
Clearly, that hasn't happened.
You complained to Google about the pirates. What you were supposed to do was to pull your own app down, and leave for a safer place.
You don't complain to your landlord when someone breaks into your home. You call the police.
Google's given you a perfectly place to sit. And it's dangerous. As a landlord, they've nothing to do with the policing. Call the real police if you like. But you won't find many for on-line marketplaces. At least not yet.
Or, you can pay your landlord to hire a gatekeeper, or private security. Show me the line-item on the agreement that you signed with Google that says your app will be protected. Then you can be right to complain to them. Until such time, be happy that you have any service at all from them. You can always start yoru own marketplace. Or your own store.
And go hug your landlord.
Send a DMCA notice to Google and the other company and take the other company to court. If Google doesn't respond by removal as per DMCA rules, take them to court, too. These tools exist, so use them. They're not *just* around for the MPAA, RIAA, and BSAA to use.
As a previous owner of an iPhone and now on my second Android phone:
1st I treat android market as a simple “apt-get” installer for my phone.
I never use it to look for applications, I use Google search or web reviews instead and use the QT codes to get my applications. Same thing I would do with any Windows or Linux application. If you want the secure walled garden go use Amazon or start your own app store, no one is stopping you, hell you can maybe even make a living off it.
Sure there is applications that can harm your phone and yes there is plenty of applications that copy others. I rather have the power myself if I want VLC or some porn app on my phone than some corporation that thinks its inappropriate. Sure if I install all kinds of junk without reading reviews and looking at security permissions I deserve to install and AV application or have my data send, this is happening to PC's all the time, what makes my phone any different after all it is a “personal” computer.
I can find plenty of games that is similar/copied to ones being sold by big developers on the PC. The difference normally is support + quality. Yes Google takes it time to remove offending software . I rather them do a proper investigations than some competitor being able to remove my app just cause he made a simple request to Google.
Give me free market any day isn't that what capitalism is all about? Or do you want to live in a social environment where you have some government(apple) tell you what you can or can not have on your phones.
Only problem I have with Google market is that allot of countries are still not allowed to have/get paid for applications like China, India, South Africa and so on, maybe if they address that issue we wont have so many copied applications cause I do think many are copied and replaced as free just because people in the countries above can not access the paid for applications. Just give everyone access to paid applications. They can still limit the developers in those countries to upload free applications only if they afraid of them selling pirated software.
So often I was defeated by the simple fact that to respond would require effort. Google wants to run a business in a market where costs are, relatively, minimal, and it creates a great margin by ignoring the very entities that feed such margins. My simple, one-man-one-vote support must be "vocalized" here.
I'm no star dev, but I have a few free applications on market. One of the things I noticed is for a while Google have had a message stating that copy protection is being deprecated, and replaced with "Licensing service". More information here: http://developer.android.com/guide/publishing/licensing.html. Not sure if this would affect OP's situation; whether he was/is using the old licensing services and/or if it will improve the situation in general.
If you do not want you stuff to be copied by the click of a button, perhaps you should have made a sculpture rather than a few pieces of information residing in a computer system.
I'm afraid the independent developers bitching here are just fucking morons. You know, even take down requests on youtube and other big sites don't warrant account termination. There are numerous ways google could shoot themselves in the foot by doing what this moronic developer asks.
First, there might be significant collateral damage : Imagine a developer with legit games too who just posted that infringing game because his mother needs an operation. Imagine two co-developers have falling out, one registers their new game first, reports the second's game as infringing, and gets the second account banned. Imagine a developer reposts another's game because he owns part but got cheated by the official developer. etc. Any such collateral damages impacts the Android market place itself, not just the developers. And such collateral damage cases should not need to seek special dispensation from google.
Second, you don't want to scare away infringing users who might become legitimate non-infringing users and improve the Android market place. A ban for infringement obviously isn't going to dissuade a professional infringer, but it'll very likely drive away a legitimate developer who's just cheating to test the waters.
Third, Google can actually process future infringement claims more efficiently if infringers continue using the same accounts. In other words, the infringed upon developers are subsidizing google's copyright enforcement efforts by their lost revenue, assuming they even lost any revenue. In fact, Google could slightly delay payouts to developers with an infringement history, increasing the recouped damages, possibly even above the lost revenues.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
As a burgeoning game developer, the main problem I see is marketing. I'd love to have a few thousand people playing my game, showing it to their friends, and hopefully for all of those thousands of free copies, a few dozen or even if I'm lucky, hundreds of their friends might decide to buy it.
If I give it away free on the Android market I have to give it away free to everyone. Hard to make a living that way.
simple make all android applications (i hate the fuck out of that word app) free then there is no gain except the honnour of writing the gamne or application in the first place .
simples*
Google doesn't want to kick him off because he's "winning" something and makes for lots of ad hits.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
http://developer.android.com/guide/publishing/licensing.html
I'm not entirely sure because I've not seen the need to use it personally yet, but wouldn't the Android Market Licensing service stop this? Been around for a while this API...
For YEARS now they have allowed spammers free reign to crap all over Usenet using their Googlegroups interface. They do nothing to block or remove spam, when clearly they have the technology, as they use in filtering GMail, to do so.
I don't know if they have a policy of making Usenet into a shitpile to make their own hosted groups more attractive. Or if they just don't care at all.
Take your lessons from the leader in the field. You don't need it pirated, you need to give it away - sort of. You also need to work the buyer a little.
The lite version of Angry Birds with 15 levels is a cute introduction to the game that rewards the downloader for the trial by providing a few hours of entertainment. Sound is used throughout to influence the player. The play control is simple, which hides some complexity that lets the player think he's smart for figuring out the puzzle. Progress is incremental - you have to defeat a level before you go on, which rewards the user with frustration - this is good to a point, but they have to be well onto the hook before you pull them forward with frustration so the first few levels have to be fairly easy - but not pathetically so. Lessons: Hook 'em with a freebie that starts easy and gets harder fast, but doesn't turn impossible. The global competitiveness thing with top scores is trite. It's overdone. Avoid it.
The game is a moral play and the player is cast as the good guy destroying the evil pigs that steal the eggs. Even my 2 year old grandson gets this. Every world starts with a cartoon video that tells a story, each level starts with an intro that builds suspense. Do pigs really steal eggs? No. But that's the premise built by the opening animation that we consent to when we play the game. Idling is nefarious pig grunting to encourage play, and play includes enthusiastic bird charging sounds. It starts easy, with one star for each level, but is very difficult at three stars each level. Each time you beat a level you get an audio reward (birds crowing and a little instrumental piece) - and a trumpet for a new high score for the level. And when you don't beat it, a punishment - pigs laughing and grunting. You can get in and out very quickly and without too much loss (you can try a level in 30 seconds or so). Quicker is better. For the cheaters there are YouTube walkthroughs. It has no ads. This is the beta they used to get people into the game and its main screen includes a link to the market where you can buy the full version now that there is one. Lessons: Tell a story. Work the user emotionally with audio, give a lot of entertainment in the beta and it'll go viral and get you lots of beta testers and the feedback you need to perfect your game. It wouldn't kill you to post the first few YouTube walkthroughs for the cheaters yourself under a nym. Cheaters think they're clever for resourcing YouTube, and they're only hurting themselves. Reward them even for just running the app, with a happy greeting. Cast the player as the good guy in a moral play.
It's a great intro to the ad-supported full version. In fact, it's such a good intro that they've now a non-beta "seasons" freebie game that has more levels that is ad supported, that gets updated every major holiday with even more levels. Lessons: free spinoffs amplify the viral nature of the freebie and can be a good little earner all by itself. Save this for after the game itself is profitable.
For the full version that's ad-supported there are far more levels of course, and more all the time. Naturally there would be, or your customers would stop viewing ads when they completed the game. The full, no-ad version isn't supported on my phone yet (Android) and I suspect that's because they're making so much money on the ads. Lessons: if the ad-based game goes viral you can hire some cheap level designers to generate more content as time goes on - and you should to keep the money rolling in. And that pays for improving the value of the for-pay game as well.
The for-pay game includes an additional cheat: the Mighty Eagle, that you have to buy in-game to use. I don't get this option on Android yet I don't think, not that I'm the cheating kind. In-game purchases are the sort of thing you probably shouldn't think about right off. But the for-pay game is ridiculously cheap: 99c on iOS. That makes it so cheap that people don't even think about buying it, and d
Help stamp out iliturcy.
According to the imperial database he was. No wonder he was hiding on a "neurtral" planet
How likely would this be to occur if there wasn't so much emphasis on having the highest number of available apps in an app store?
Google's motto is "Do no evil", but I wonder if they think they're not responsible for evil if it spreads because they do northing.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
From all my dealings with Google (Nexus One, and Google Apps Premier) their customer service and tech support is either painfully slow and at times practically non-existent.
Here's the deal there are two approaches to app repositories:
1. Let anyone post whatever they want and do minimal policing of the repository to comply local law and to remove blatant malware (Google's method).
This will result in a lot of crap (including malware), and IP violations (ripoff apps, pirated apps etc.). The up side is you as a developer wouldn't have to deal with much bureaucracy to get your app included in the repository.
2. Actively control what apps are allowed into your repository and actively remove any that are later found to have evaded the drag-net (Apple's method)
The down side is there's a lot of bureaucracy involved in getting your app into the repository. The up side is that you can reasonably expect that your IP will be respected and complaints against violators will be dealt with appropriately rather than ignored or given lip service.
What you can't have is both the freedom to post whatever the frack you want, and the security to have your IP protected. That same freedom that lets you sell your app easily also lets pirates, and copycats sell whatever they want easily.
Google lets you install anything you want. There is a user setting to ensure that you are only installing "official" apps
Are you referring to the Settings > Applications > Unknown sources checkbox or to Android Debug Bridge? If the former, then AT&T leaves that checkbox at the "official apps only" setting and hides it from the user. If the latter, then Google requires device makers to leave the ADB backdoor open, but AT&T makes one register as a company in order to download the drivers to use ADB.
Looked at that link. Where's your proof? I can't read anything on that link that looks like what you attest to have happened.
"Oh, no! Money that only exists in the future of an alternate dimension where the artist/business made more money was 'stolen'! This is almost as bad as that time when I decided not to buy a product from a store, thereby depriving them of profit that they could, potentially, have had!"
Doesn't say that only if something physical is lost can there be theft.
It's IS saying that no money was lost therefore nothing was lost. Crippen was selling a service to unlock XBoxes and Sony don't. So how can Sony lose money to Crippen selling his services to jailbreak someone's property on their instruction?
This is not just copyright infringement. This is plagiarism and misappropriation.
No this is copyright infringement.
In this context, plagiarism means copyright infringement combined with failure to attribute; hence the "just" in "not just copyright infringement".
What you label a "software thief" isn't any different from warez pirates or those illegally copying movies.
The difference between warez and plagiarism is that release groups in the warez scene don't strip off the logo of the original publisher, such as Last Century Fox's searchlight scene or Disney's castle or Paramount's mountain or WB's shield or Universal's globe or Columbia's torch lady.
No plagiarism and copyright infringement are different. This is why they have different names.
I can take a copy of "The Deathly Hollows" from JKRowling and make copies and sell them as "The Deathly Hollows" by JKRowling. This is called "copyright infringement".
If, however, I take that copy, rename it "The Deadly Sorcerer" by Anon Coward, this is plagiarism.
And it's worse than copyright infringement because I could find a pliant court and claim that JKRowling is infringing on my copyrights and get her work seized and her made a scofflaw.
"Plagiarism at this level is a form of copyright infringement"
Contrast and compare. If one is "a form of" another, then how can they be THE SAME???
A Dog is a form of mammal. But dog and mammal are not the same thing.
You are guilty of being a bloody idiot.
There is a reason there is a legal term "intellectual property": because it's different to physical property and has different laws and different offences against those laws.
"Intellectual property" didn't become a legal term until the formation of WIPO, as I understand it. Richard Stallman has explained how "intellectual property" confuses several issues, and I've written my own thoughts on the term. The term carries several hidden assumptions, at least some of which I believe are contrary to fact:
If you mean copyright, say copyright. Otherwise, I agree with the points you make
I contacted the original developers of those games but they were still being sold a week later.
The question remains, did those developers contact Google in a timely manner? Google responded to his request in two days. I think two days is pretty reasonable. If Google was contacted, we do not know what Google has done. They could be doing something clever, but they are a big company so we aren't supposed to assume anything but incompetence or malice.
The problems of piracy, malware and promotion (discoverability) would exist with or without Google having a store. Baker said of Amazon, "hopefully they can do a better job than Google. They will, ... until they don't.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
But a weak article. "Devs" amount to mister Baker here. And for his trouble, he receives free advertising on /. and in the Guardian. So, we now know that one developer had this problem; it was handled by Google, though not entirely to his satisfaction; he got free publicity for complaining. What did we learn?
Riker would love princess leia if he met her at the red dwarf ship. ;)
While completely justified, the developer sounds like a very angry bird.
It takes time and effort to slingshot those pigs out of the store.
Let the app be downloaded/installed for free, perhaps with a demo mode or a time limited trial period.
Require some kind of a digital certificate or unique registration key, that's tied to the device's IMEI/MEID/ESN/whatever to be purchased from your website, that has to be installed/entered in order for the app to be allowed to fully function.
So don't be stupid enough to live in an area where AT&T is the only carrier with acceptable coverage.
So don't be stupid enough to live with someone else who was stupid enough to buy a phone from AT&T and has added you on her family plan.
How do you recommend installing such an alternative market if you happen to be on AT&T, which hides "Unknown sources" on all its phones?
Erm. From the Google Android Market?
Such applications will be removed. From the Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement:
>The culprit was traced to a Chinese origin. I highly doubt any US authorities will bother to run over there, hog-tie the guy and drag him back over to the US.
In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The A-Team.
It is laughable that Slashdot posters are arguing AGAINST piracy only because many are developers. Only developer piracy is immoral.
Score & Karma: SASA: Slashdot Approval Seekers Anonymous
if you wish to complain about something then this would be it.
http://boesky.blogspot.com/2011/02/googles-pimp-hand-is-strong-dirty.html
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