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."

Comments

Wrong, auto-banning is always stupid

[Weezul]

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.

Re:Wrong, auto-banning is always stupid

[Weezul]

Yes, a criminal court would care about exactly those points. If google doesn't want to worry about that shit, then google must be very conservative on banning people. Ain't rocket science, just the wider world outside your cubicle.

Re:Wrong, auto-banning is always stupid

[Weezul]

You lost me right there.

You seriously think google should damage their Android ecosystem by deleting non-infringing apps because the developer posted an infringing app? Umm, that's just plain retarded. Do you realize how bad the scenario I described would look for Google? lol

You realize that a criminal or civil court would take all that shit I described into consideration, right? Even if the infringer had only ever posted infringing content! Google isn't interested in or able to recreate our court system here.

Also, courts get kinda touchy about anyone cutting in on their territory. In particular, our infringer with a sick mother could absolutely find an ambulance chaser to sue google for his own lost legit revenue plus lawyer fees plus whatever. Do you think google should deduct their lawyer's expenses from the original legit developers profits?

As I said, the original developers asking for bans are just fucking morons who understand nothing about the wider world outside.

Re:Wrong, auto-banning is always stupid

[Weezul]

Our courts would take the "mothers operation" scenario into account, even if you're robbing a bank. It certainly doesn't 'get you off' but it changes things. And the same applies to all the other examples I gave. Yes, all the examples I gave are all stupid behavior, but that's the point : people are often stupid, but that doesn't make them bad.

For this reason, any system that administers punishments must generally account for the gradations in human motivations, much like our courts.

Example : High school disciplinary procedures come under fire all the time because the administrators are too stupid to apply the rules with the necessary finesse. We don't see nearly the same problems in university disciplinary because the ultimate judges are clever well educated people.

An arbitrary punishment of auto-banning all infringers would just destroy Google's credibility with the Russian, Chinese, Indian, etc. developers who'll engage in casual infringement, pushing them towards because it'll punish the partially or potentially legit developers much more than the wholesale infringers. In fact, it'll push them into becoming wholesale infringers by forcing them to break more rules even to participate legitimately.

Google's only easy answer is banning only the worst offenders, ideally only after analyzing their modus operandi well enough to slow similar infringers in future. You know, if you take an antibiotic every day, you'll just find yourself fighting off stronger anti-biuotic resistant diseases. Anyone who doesn't understand that qualifies as stupid.

As I said, there is one useful middle ground punishment google may apply to casual infringers, namely delaying their payments and demanding more identification. That sort of punishment will discourage causal infringers.

In any case, google's lawyers have obviously thought through this system extremely well. I'm sure they've already understood the stupidity of auto-bans from their experience with google video, youtube, and google docs.