Google Boots Transdroid From Android Market

fysdt writes with a TorrentFreak story that starts: "Google has pulled one of the most popular torrent download managers from the Android Market because of policy violations. Before Google booted the application, Transdroid had been available for two years and amassed 400,000 users during that time. Thus far Google hasn't specified what the exact nature of Transdoid's violations are, but it's not unlikely that they relate to copyright infringement."

Comments

The grey line of theft

[SuperKendall]

You know, I have always held out like many others that torrenting was not theft, that purely virtual copies harmed no one.

But I have to admit feeling some kind of line is crossed with a system that can (as the article stated) scan a physical barcode of something in front of you and start fetching it in moments.

It's still not really theft but frankly, from a moral standpoint it's so close to theft I have trouble distinguishing the difference.

My own take on the matter has always been if I cannot buy something in some other way, I have no problems acquiring it; so the ability to do exactly the opposite, acquiring something when the physical presence of it exists right in front of you, just seems very wrong.

It's obviously that anyone with technical knowledge could easily set up something similar but I have to say I don't really have a problem with any company saying they do not wish to implicitly support something like this and thus banning an application from a store. I doubt this app will be appearing in an Android store either.

The really bad things about apps like this is that it appears rather like theft not just to me, but to the people that make laws, who will over time seek to make illegal that which should not be, using this as a basis.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Weezul]

I never knew this existed, but frankly this sounds like an anti-consumerist political statement, not a serious piracy tool.

I'd never enter a physical store with the intention of selecting my torrents, just like I'd never buy physical media, that's just weird, man. If this prevents a couple teenagers who hang out at the mall from buying CDs, well that's great, but the actual economic impact sound wholly secondary to the anti-consumerist moral message.

I would otoh use an android app that listens to the song playing in the club, identifies it, and pirates the mp3. I currently type the author & song into the notepad and pirate the song later.

Re:The grey line of theft

[im_thatoneguy]

You got your morality issues ass-backwards. Imaginary property rights are immoral. Furthermore the world would be a better, wealthier, and more equitable place if immaginary property rights were completely abolished.

Imaginary property takes real time and money to create.

It baffles me how *GEEKS* of all people are so antagonistic against their own beliefs out of small scale greed.

Geeks are the kings of intellectual property. We don't weld things together. We don't tend to work in assembly lines. We don't forge steel or mine for ore. We Think. The geek creed is that intellect and creativity are at least as valuable as physical might.

But when it comes time to being payed for the products of our minds we dismiss its value as just "imaginary property".

The product of my mind is as valuable as the product of someone's hand. If you don't want to pay for it then you can't have it. If you don't want it, then you don't have to have it.

People *WANT* movies, television, software, books etc... they *VALUE* movies, television, software and books. But unlike other things of value which were created from the industry of the hand you want to destroy any economy from industry of the mind.

Well, Fuck You. I want to make a living off of my creativity and intellect. I work long, often 14+ hour days to create what you want to have. If imaginary property has no value and requires no input of resources go fucking do it yourself. But no, you won't (and you probably can't even if you wanted to).

I'm not saying that I think piracy is equivalent to stealing. I would say it's more akin to not putting a few cents in the parking meter and hoping you don't get caught. And I think the fines should be comparable. Get caught for downloading a $1.00 show then pay a $30 fine. And I'm certainly guilty just this week of failing to pay for parking and downloading torrents. But I also do buy a lot of media and I also do usually pay for parking and I think that tenuous balance between respecting the law but also ignoring it when practical is a fair and workable solution.

There were plenty of parking spaces on the street open but I certainly denied the city a little revenue by not paying and running into grab a smoothie. So by your standards a parking space is "imaginary property". After all, it didn't cost the city anything directly for me to be parking there.

Re:The grey line of theft

[sqrt(2)]

I agree, but you then have to accept that there is an entire separate conversation society should be having; is copyright in its current form an ethical social contract? We're seeing three or four different bodies of laws rolled into one nebulous and overreaching concept called "intellectual property" which is in reality a power-play by big business to handcuff culture and make sure nothing ever enters public domain again.

The current copyright system is broken, it's ethically bankrupt, so we no longer have an obligation to hold up our end of the social contract.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Quietlife2k]

With the exorbitant cost of physical media, the relative ease with which it can be damaged, and whatever DRM is embedded, I cannot blame people for wanting a cheap no hassle backup.

Anyone blaming the tools is nuts. We have had similarly disruptive tools before and should know that banning or making them illegal does nothing to stop their use.

Think if you will about lock picks. Legal in most of the world to own, to use on your own locks, to carry around in you car, but illegal to use to commit a crime.

What's so different with the digital equivalent ?

Why do governments and people world wide seem so scared of digital lock picks, but are content to have legally available physical ones ?

Re:The grey line of theft

[LordLucless]

I totally agree - the fact that the government has unilaterally "altered the agreement" so that copyright extends to such ludicrous lengths does amount to theft. By my reckoning, they've stolen about a hundred years worth of art from the public domain, and hence, from the public.

But that's totally aside from the point, which is that copyright infringement and theft are two different things, and need to be discussed separately.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Runaway1956]

"It baffles me how *GEEKS* of all people are so antagonistic against their own beliefs out of small scale greed."

[sarcasm] Of course geeks should control their small scale greed, in deference to corporate macro greed! [/sarcasm]

Come on, imaginary property is imaginary property. Who should know better than the geeks? They have plenty of it!

Re:The grey line of theft

[PCM2]

Well, if it then vaporized the item in front of it, it might be analogous to theft I guess. Theft is really more about depriving something from someone else than gaining it for yourself; in this case, the outlet still has the physical item.

Nonetheless, I think almost everybody understands on a gut level that this sort of thing is ethically wrong.

A lot of people, if they found an envelope full of money, would keep the money. At the same time, if the envelope had someone's name written on it, I think a great many people would try to think of a way to get that money back to the named person before they just walked off with it.

Similarly, I think a great many people make a distinction between downloading something using BitTorrent from their computer at home and actually walking into a CD store, spending a half hour browsing the new releases, and then using a magic wand to download all of the ones they like without paying the store a dime. For the first one, I think a lot of people might not think they're doing anything wrong at all. But I think most of us recognize that doing the second one just kind of makes you a dick.

When I first heard about this app, I, like a lot of people I'm sure, said, "Wow awesome! I totally want to try this out!" But when I imagined this scenario in my mind, I was imagining walking into someplace like a Best Buy or a Wal-Mart and fucking them over, while at the same time snickering about how high-tech and clever I was. I wasn't imagining walking into Aquarius Records or some other independent record store and using it to save myself some money.

To give another example, if you go to sci-fi conventions or other places where celebrities make appearances, often times they will charge you some money to pose for a photograph. Often it's actually more money than the cost of a typical CD, which on the face of it sounds crazy. And hell, you could easily stand in front of their table with your thumb up and have your friend shoot the picture and walk away. (You'd even own the copyright on that photo!) But most of us understand that this kind of thing makes you a dick. You can walk away thinking, "I can't believe that has-been so-and-so charges so much for a photo," but you don't just screw them over while they're sitting right there -- even though you're not technically "stealing" anything.

It all comes down to what makes your own moral Geiger counter start clicking. I think most of us know when we're straying into the darker areas, in general. So I don't really think it's necessary to draw this hard-line distinction between "theft" and "copyright infringement." Maybe it's more honest to talk about right and wrong, and then think about the best way to define laws around that.

Re:The grey line of theft

[cynyr]

I'll pay for content/services that I like. I pay for both cable and netflix, but I still download some stuff. Mainly BBC sports coverage, as it doesn't have have commercials, and it has commentators that either were in that sport or a very similar one. I actually found some of the motorcycle racing I normally download on SPEED and decided to watch it. The problem was after lap 3 they went to commercial, had no recap of the qualifying, and simply didn't seem to know what is going on, or who the racer were.

Short answer, let me pay for good content and I would. Could I pay BBC for the ability to watch a time-shifted live coverage that I can pause so that I can get up to get pizza, tend to my children, take the dog out, etc., I'd probably be willing to pay $200 or so for it.

As for copyrights, GPL is a copyright license, so is CC, I have some programming out there under GPLv3. Granted I'm an HVAC engineer so it's not at a level that would make it into the kernel(if it was at all kernel related, or even in C), so that does tarnish it some. There is not much of an open community for HVAC stuff.

Re:The grey line of theft

[t2t10]

Well, Fuck You. I want to make a living off of my creativity and intellect. I work long, often 14+ hour days to create what you want to have. If imaginary property has no value and requires no input of resources go fucking do it yourself. But no, you won't (and you probably can't even if you wanted to).

(1) Many geeks don't get more than a salary from their intellectual creations. They'd likely get the same salary if copyright didn't exist. In fact, copyright and patents often make work harder and less pleasant for geeks.

(2) Just because something takes work to create doesn't mean there should be laws that ensure you get paid for it. It's a cost/benefit tradeoff. If copyrights and patents didn't exist, some content might not get created, and other content that doesn't get created now would get created. It's far from obvious that we'd be worse off.

From the way you describe your work and your attitudes towards it, I have my doubts that we'd be worse off without your creations.

And I'm certainly guilty just this week of failing to pay for parking and downloading torrents.

Well, I'm not. Sounds like you really have a problem with moral behavior, which is probably why you complain so loudly about other people's torrents and then insist on immoral intellectual property laws.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Overzeetop]

No, most geeks trade fractions of their lives for money. A very, very small set of geeks actually benefit from the IP system, and most of that benefit is a relatively small fraction of the benefit which is gained by early investors with actual cash.

Geeks are pissed because other people are making money off of the stuff they - or those like them - do without actually putting in much of the actual brain power to pull it off. It's not surprising at all, actually.

Re:The grey line of theft

[t2t10]

Many geeks work for companies who sell intellectual property. If there was no protection for intellectual property then there would be no employer to provide them a salary.

Many people get paid to create without intellectual property protection. I'm not just talking open source developers and academics, but also really big industries like fashion:

http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html

The movie and TV industries are insignificant in comparison, both in the degree of creativity (barely existent) and in their economic significance (small).

In the case of TV and Film you would probably have none of the films or TV shows you've seen in the last few years.

Maybe we'd get some decent content again instead of that low-quality, derivative commercial crap. Maybe people would enter the industry again who do it because they care about the product instead of fame and fortune. Maybe live theater would start doing better again. Altogether, there's a good chance that performing arts would greatly improve if we got rid of the legal basis under which Hollywood and the TV studios have gotten big and usurped our culture.

If you're an author

Nobody is forcing you to be an author now, and nobody would be forcing you to be an author if we curtail or abolish copyright.

And that's ignoring just the morality of it.

What morality? Copyrights and patents are a utilitarian deal: we give you this opportunity for profit in order to encourage you to create something. And as a society, we can change the deal, and if you don't like it, just don't create anything and become a plumber instead. The world doesn't owe you a job as a writer or movie maker.

ALL PROPERTY IS IMAGINARY PROPERTY. Your house is wood. Who says you get to own that wood and brick and concrete? A piece of paper, if that. There is no special property to material goods which imbues it with moral worth.

Wow, are you really that dim that you don't understand the difference between something physical and something non-physical?

Furthermore, copyrights and patents are temporary, artificial grants of monopolies, something that is legally and practically quite distinct from property.

Re:The grey line of theft

[LordLucless]

Alternate scenario:

Creator Creates Product.
Creator sells 100x products each to VendorA and VendorB for 1Currency per item
VendorA marks product to 1.5C. VendorB sets up shop next door and marks product to 1.25C
100 buyer purchase products from VendorB
As far as that vendor is concerned they had 150C worth of product that is now worthless and they're out 100C in inventory which while not physically vaporized has had the demand vaporized and is essentially worth $0.

Again, not theft. Devaluing something isn't stealing. It's devaluing. Use the right word for the right thing. Just the same as splashing a bucket of paint on a picture isn't stealing - it's destruction of property. And yes, graffiti is damage. No it's not theft. I never said the copyright infringement didn't do any damage, I said it wasn't theft.

Re:The grey line of theft

[smash]

Its not just the ones who work for companies who sell IP. ANY company who has geeks on the payroll is using them (and by extension, their IP) to gain a competitive advantage. No competitive advantage = no employer = no salary.

Re:The grey line of theft

[NeutronCowboy]

I want to make a living off of my creativity and intellect. I work long, often 14+ hour days to create what you want to have.

Fair enough. Let's make one assumption clear though: you think you create something from nothing. Not true. You create something by taking what you have learned so far, and apply it to a problem and (hopefully) generate something new.
Let's take software, for example. A very, very large number of technologies that go into creating software are available for free. HTML is just one example. C/C++ is another. Furthermore, every single piece of software out there builds on the software that came before it.

This line of thinking works for every type of intellectual work. From books to movies, everything has been done before. You're just adding a small twist to it. Disney is the single biggest example of it: nearly their entire catalog of classics is a near-exact rip-off of existing stories. If you think you're creating something from scratch, you're deluding yourself. You're taking advantage of a whole set of knowledge that you are free to use as you wish. If you couldn't, your creative endeavors would amount to nothing, as you'd have to pay so much to other creators that there wouldn't be anything left for you.

I work in the software industry. I know exactly how much I profit from the fact that I can leverage what I know without having to pay everyone every time I use that knowledge that they gave me.As a matter of fact, I know that I basically would not be able to make a living if I would have to pay everyone.

That is the problem with the concept of intellectual property: if applied consequently in all instances, innovation would basically stop.

Re:The grey line of theft

[MacGyver2210]

We don't weld things together. We don't tend to work in assembly lines. We don't forge steel or mine for ore.

I weld, solder, smelt, and forge routinely for my geeky projects. Does being good with a computer somehow preclude me from labor-intensive tasks? Metallurgy is seriously fun. Of course I do it.

I give away all of my code for free. Part of that is I don't see any inherent value in some snippets I have made, but if someone wants to steal my code when I make a game or utility or something useful, go right ahead. I'm not going to be out the 1's and 0's of that file. I still have a copy. Nothing was stolen. The transfer of property is purely imaginary, and is a way corporations and the government try to wean cash income from something they're bad at on a management level, and which they don't understand well.

Re:The grey line of theft

[demonlapin]

lot of libertarians here that would like to see the whole system burn

Libertarianism and anarchism aren't the same thing. Especially when it comes to property rights.

Re:The grey line of theft

[grcumb]

There's nothing unethical about scanning a bar code to see reviews or better prices, but scanning a code to begin torrenting it is definitely wrong by any objective standard.

Why do you say that? I'm not trolling here; I'm legitimately interested in the particular reasons why you see this as unconditionally unethical and immoral.

And by way of playing the devil's advocate, let me ask you this: If you could scan the barcode, pay a nominal fee and begin downloading immediately, directly from the author - instead of buying it at a significant markup in the store from the distributor, would that still be wrong by any objective standard?

Again, I'm not trolling here. I really am trying to tease out what particularly makes this more reprehensible than a dozen or so related behaviours that are largely considered acceptable - or at least inconsequential enough to cause only passing concern.

Re:The grey line of theft

[zeroshade]

"Fashion patents" are a relatively new phenomenon. As for copyright, if you copy that Gucci design, but you don't call it Gucci and don't use the Gucci logo, and don't pretend at all that it's actually a Gucci product, then you're perfectly fine.

Re:The grey line of theft

[NeutronCowboy]

- Because something isn't 100% original doesn't mean it isn't an original creative work. Duplication != Recreation.

You're correct. However, the law doesn't distinguish between duplication and recreation. Intellectual property means that you cannot use whatever is covered by copyright. If a one-click purchase or upgrade button is patented, you can't use it without paying the owner of the patent. If someone owns the copyright on a work, you cannot use it without their permission - even if that work is a silence of time N.

Advocating protection of specific categories of work for a limited period doesn't mean it has to be applied to "All instances" for "all time". The OP was arguing for the abolishment of all intellectual property.

Great. Now we're getting into the details of copyright law. Define limited. Is life of the author + 120 years limited? Is 10000 years limited? Is 30 minutes limited? Why? Why not? Note the Supreme Court decision that holds current copyright duration is "limited". Is that fair? Why/Why not? Be detailed.

Intellectual protection of people's creativity doesn't preclude people from collaborating on public works e.g. C++, HTML, OpenGL etc... as proven by the fact that with IP law we've managed to create all these things just fine thank you very much.

Copyright is a construct of law. Putting an intellectual work into the public work is only possible because the current law allows for it. Why should it? After all, people who put their sweat and blood into creating something abstract should be rewarded. Right? Alternatively, if they can put their work into the public domain for the greater good, why don't you? You wouldn't want to be caught mooching off of the hard work of others?

Obviously IP law doesn't cause an apocalypse of creativity considering the fact that it seems to be carrying on just fine. I'm not hearing a lot of complaining from artists that they can't work anymore.

Then you aren't paying attention. Do you know what the advice is that is given to first-year art students? Create a movie in a white room with one chair and 2 of your closest friends. With no music. Otherwise, you open yourself up to litigation. Have you seen the hullaballoo around the upgrade button?
The current system only barely works because it is enforced only when people feel like enforcing it. It'd come crashing down like a house cards if people would go after every copyright infringement.

Re:The grey line of theft

[AmiMoJo]

Nonetheless, I think almost everybody understands on a gut level that this sort of thing is ethically wrong.

Maybe for the first, say, 10 years. After that, no.

Similarly, I think a great many people make a distinction between downloading something using BitTorrent from their computer at home and actually walking into a CD store, spending a half hour browsing the new releases, and then using a magic wand to download all of the ones they like without paying the store a dime. For the first one, I think a lot of people might not think they're doing anything wrong at all. But I think most of us recognize that doing the second one just kind of makes you a dick.

Depends. I can't afford to buy lots of random albums on the off chance they are good, I need to listen to them first. Record shops have listening stations for that, Amazon has clips and free tracks. There is also the radio and TV of course. The biggest problem for bands is not copyright infringement, it is being herd in the first place. If no-one hears your music no-one is going to buy it on a whim either. Even more troublesome is the fact that the big labels pretty much control what gets played on the radio and what gets promoted in shops and on web sites, so unless you have a rip-off contract with them you are going to find it very hard to get noticed.

The internet has gone a long way to democratising music by allowing musicians to promote themselves for free and without the need for major advertising. Word of mouth spreads fast on social networking sites where a single "I like this" post on your profile can then be read by all of your friends.

So from the point of view of most artists it is better for them if people download their album and at least listen to it, and then maybe go on to buy tickets to a gig or some merchandise, or even a physical CD. Record shops are just a part of the problem, and by supporting them you are denying artists the chance to make a living.

Re:The grey line of theft

[LanMan04]

Nonetheless, I think almost everybody understands on a gut level that this sort of thing is ethically wrong.

I think that's only because modern copyright law has conditioned you to think that way.

If copyright was a grand total of, say, 15 years, and you were conditioned to know that from a young age, would you feel bad downloading that Nirvana album? Of course not!!! It would be legal, and since it would be accepted by society as THE NORM, no one would think it's wrong.

Gut level = conditioned by culture.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Flammon]

People have scruples but corporations do not. As technology progresses, things are supposed to get cheaper because of automation but corporations don't spread the wealth, they keep everything for themselves in a very selfish manner. Their only goal is to maximize profits and they will rip us off every chance they get. Corporations have no interest in sharing their wealth whatsoever that is why we have this kind of problem. A song shouldn't cost more than a few pennies to download but we're being charged 50 times that, for what? They're not charging a fair price. If they did, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Try again..

[nurb432]

It was removed from the MARKET, not your device.

Re:Try again..

[_Sprocket_]

Until the next OS upgrade perhaps?

When we get to that point, then sound the alarm. As it is, we're not there yet.

Re:Try again..

[hedwards]

At that point, you just side load the application. Honestly, this is hardly the kind of big deal that it could be. Sure it sucks and I'd like to see an explanation, but it's not like the Appstore where removing an app pretty much kills it. People looking for torrent programs are probably savvy enough to download the app from elsewhere.

Re:Try again..

[DaScribbler]

It's not like they're banning it from your device. Got a new phone or wiped the device on an upgrade? Just download get it from a different source. Google isn't saying you can't have it on your device. They're simply not allowing it on their market. Whoop-de-do. There are other markets and sources (and in this case directly from the developer).

Re:Try again..

[_Sprocket_]

Sure we are. OS upgrades occasionally break compatibility with apps. If no further updates are going to be made available for the app because it's been blocked from the Market, and an OS upgrade makes the app start crashing, then that's that.

Most Android environments do not require the Market to install apps (I say most because inevitably someone's customized Android environment will force you to use their market).

Re:Try again..

[cynyr]

or when you stop side loading it on your android device. Remember this is android, and sideloading exists. Well a phone maker maybe could remove it, but the device will get hacked, and then CyanogenMod will be available and will have side loading.

Re:Try again..

[edumacator]

Won't people still be able to sideload it? They just removed it from the Market.

Re:Try again..

[Samantha Wright]

Ignoring your paranoid flamebait, someone should point out that there's plenty of other products like that, so I guess I will. Apple's iOS has a kill switch and Amazon removed 1984 and Animal Farm from all Kindles following a licensing dispute with the rights holders. And let's not forget the PS3 Other OS fiasco. Also, any DRM system that has to contact the master server to determine if a game is properly licensed (Steam, Spore's DRM, Games for Windows Live...) can have the same effect.

If it bothers you so much, jailbreak and pirate everything. No regulatory body has ever succeeded in stamping out a black market for which there was sufficient financial incentive; in this era of information, notoriety and ego will suffice instead, and have sufficed for the past thirty years, since the invention of the first copy prevention mechanism. Yar-har, fiddle dee-tee.

Eventually, the people who commission these systems will get the clue that a free culture is the best solution. Until then, just work around their silly unenlightened nonsense. But remember to pay them. They need to survive too.

Re:Try again..

[Bert64]

A tax on media is a terrible idea...
It punishes anyone who needs blank media, regardless of what they use that media for... Even if those people never consume any copyrighted content at all, or purchase if legitimately.
Also with a guaranteed income from tax, what incentive do content producers have to actually produce decent content? They can instead pump out endless streams of complete crap and still collect their cash, and doing so would be far more profitable.

It's akin to taxing motor vehicles in order to pay blacksmiths... Poor blacksmiths not getting any business anymore because the evil cars have come along to take it all away. The real problem is your business model is obsolete, so either get with the times or go bankrupt.

Re:Try again..

[SanityInAnarchy]

Until the next OS upgrade perhaps?

Most of the major Android manufacturers have committed themselves to selling devices with unlocked bootloaders. This means it's not terribly difficult for you to install the OS upgrade yourself, and there's also nothing stopping you from downloading the latest source, compiling that, and installing it.

So there's also nothing stopping you from installing a version which doesn't wipe software without your permission.

All of this also means it's fairly unlikely Google will start trying to wipe software without your permission, since it's clear that this would piss people off, and anyone really determined would be able to get it back anyway.

Or when you replace your phone?

This is the part I'm not sure about. I would assume the app purchase is tied to your Google account, so you'd normally transfer apps that way. However, if you've rooted your device -- which, reading the above again, is no longer equivalent to jailbreaking an iPhone, it's actually a fairly standard feature -- I would expect you have some options.

I can't guarantee it, though, which is why I'd be wary of buying any app that cost any amount of money I couldn't afford to spend on that one phone. There are enough free and open source apps, and I'm a programmer, so I'd be more than happy to scratch my own itches here.

I don't really see the difference when the manufacturer of a device can tell you what you can and cannot do with that device.

They aren't -- see above.

That said, be careful. When you buy a new Android device, get one with an unlocked bootloader. Bonus points: Ask for it in the store, to make carriers more aware that people do want this. (Of course, do your research -- it's entirely possible the salesperson will lie to you without having any idea what "unlocked" means.)

I'm trying to think of other products where the manufacturer can make such decisions without your permission. Any ideas?

It takes a computing device of some sort to actually enforce this, but oddly enough, there do exist devices which are similarly locked down. Newer BMWs can only be serviced at a BMW dealer, because BMW actively locks them down, while other cars can be serviced at any local dealer, and much more cheaply.

It's also extremely rare that any device actually makes a decision like this. The only time I can remember it happening in recent history is when it's actually malware, or with Amazon pulling 1984 from Kindles -- but Kindles aren't smartphones.

I definitely agree with your motivation, but you can actually own your phone and the software in it, you just have to put a bit of care into the choice of both. It is possible to buy an Android device locked-down enough that there will be software you don't want on it, and software you want will either not be there or could be removed later -- but this isn't true of all Android devices.

Re:Try again..

[Fuzi719]

You need to root/jailbreak BOTH OSs, the difference is that if you don't want to root/JB your device (you know, you bought a phone and want it to just work), iOS kicks the crap out of Android.

You don't have to root an Android phone in order to sideload applications (unless you bought it from AT&T, but that's your carrier's fault, not Android)

Having recently gone from an iPhone 4 to an HTC Desire S... well, I'm really thinking about going back to iOS due to how terrible HTC Android is. Tethering problems, network stack crashes, and general failures all over the place. If this is what "one of the best Android devices" (according to many reviews) is like, well, I don't want any of that horrible shit.

If you're having those kinds of problems, you've either done something really stupid to the hardware or OS, or it is just your bad luck to get a defective piece of hardware. Those kinds of issues are not common. I suspect USER ERROR.

I know it's just the HTC Desire S rom, but I don't want to root the device, I don't want to fuck around with it. If I want to fuck around with an Android device, I'll buy one for that. My phone is my phone, if I screw it, I lose money.

My Android phone (also HTC) is my only phone. I've had no issues, it works for me every time, night and day, home or away. I have no tethering problems (wired or Wi-Fi), no network stack crashes, no general failures. And it is more than just a screen full of app icons, I have very useful widgets that give me valuable info at a glance of the screen. Can't do that on IOS.

Re:Copyright infringment? ORLY?

[neokushan]

The key is in the summary: "Thus far Google hasn’t specified what the exact nature of Transdoid’s violations are".

Anything beyond this is pure speculation. there are plenty of torrent apps on the market, why was this singled out? There's probably a completely separate issue with the program, but because it's "torrents", people assume it's copyright infringement. I'm not saying it isn't, I'm not saying it is, what I'm saying is only Google knows why.

Re:Pressure from the Telcos

[WRX SKy]

Transdroid wasn't a BT client for phones, it allowed you to remotely manage a BT client.

e.g. My home machine is d/l'ing torrents, and my phone can connect to my home machine (via Transdroid) to check status, start/stop torrents, etc.

I would insert an obligatory RTFA comment... but it was in the summary ("the most popular torrent download manager") - so it's obvious you didn't even get past the subject.

Re:Cue rant about the tool and its uses

[Osgeld]

best buy sells boxed linux with a upc on the back

I agree with you but linux in a store is not all that uncommon, though it may only be one flavour and have 2 in stock its there on occasion

Re:Nah

[smash]

It's immoral to pay the assholes who sell physical CDs, major labels, etc. To me, the moral question is more : How much more convenient & pleasant do they need to make it before I buy the product?

I know apple is "the enemy" but to me they are convenient enough. For movies, for example, i have a few choices. I torrent it, watch it once, and store it on my hard drive for years taking up space just in case i want to watch it again and cbf finding a decent torrent. I get in my car, go to the local video library and rent it (and suffer late fees if i forget to return it on time). I stream it to my AppleTV where i can watch as many times as I like for 48 hrs.

For me, its a no brainer. If you have the bandwidth, AppleTV works pretty well. I'm totally willing to pay the few dollars for a rental to save me wasting time and energy to find a torrent, wait for the download, only to find its badly encoded

If you don't think content is worth the asking price, then don't consume it.

ban hammers from one hardware store

[justhatched]

If I owned a hardware store and advertised hammers by displaying the use of the hammer in breaking into a house/safe whatever, then maybe there would be some not unexpected bad blood from people who experienced some damage from hammer wielding thieves, or were even just worried about the possibility.

Whether the recipient seemed like they deserved such treatment because they did bad things to kittens is moot, being seen to promote illegal activities as a positive use of your product is just a bit silly, even if you vehemently disagree with said law.

Arguing about the pros and cons of banning hammers in a particular store because in some cases the use is wrong but seems justified seems even sillier to me.