Pirated iOS App Store Site Shuts Down

SternisheFan writes with this excerpt from CNET: "Installous, a major portal for pirated paid apps from Apple's App Store, won't be around anymore. Development team Hackulous today announced the closure of Installous on their official Web site. As of today, the pirated app store no longer works, and only shows these errors: 'Outdated version. Installous will now terminate' or 'API Error. API unavailable.' For many years, Installous offered complete access to thousands of paid iOS apps for free for anyone with a jailbroken iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Think of it as being able to walk into a fancy department store, steal anything you want, and never get caught."

Comments

Piracy = Theft Analogy

[Sam H]

Think of it as being able to walk into a fancy department store, steal anything you want, and never get caught.

Oh wow, the piracy / physical theft analogy. Looks like the first Slashdot troll of the year!

Re:Piracy = Theft Analogy

[Runaway1956]

If/when we fix copyright laws, then I might respect them more. You want copyrights for software? Five years. You want copyrights for music, books, and movies? Fifteen years. That's it, no more. Software is all but useless from an economic point of view after five years. Works of fiction never lose value, but still, fifteen years. Original research in a scientific field, I might go to 30 years. Genuine R&D, that takes dump truck loads of money? I might go thirty years on that as well.

In today's world, I have zero respect for copyright law.

Re:Piracy = Theft Analogy

[timholman]

The "argument" is not "pointless". Ones and zeros have almost no value. They are reproducible, infinitely, for free. But, you want to charge me a dollar just to use one particular combination of ones and zeros?

It never ceases to amaze me how people with a background in computer programming and operations (as you clearly have) will discount their own labor, and the labor of others.

The iOS / Android store model is everything that the Slashdot crowd claims to support in software development. Most of the money goes to the developers, and most of those developers are not rich. In return for putting the effort into writing and maintaining a software package that gives you many hours of enjoyment (or utility), a developer asks for less money that you'd pay to buy a candy bar or can of soda. It is the micropayment support system that everyone used to wish for back in the days of multi-hundred dollar monopoly software prices, and yet somehow, to some people, it is still too much to pay.

I support the iOS / Android store model, and I say that as someone who has written an open source software utility with thousands of users. I distribute it freely, but that is my choice, not the choice of someone else. I have zero sympathy for those who think they have the right to make that choice for someone who is only asking you to pay one or two dollars for his time and effort.

Re:Piracy = Theft Analogy

[BasilBrush]

Yep. Anyone who uses a GPL'd free product should expect that if/when he passes that free item on, he doesn't charge for it.

So that's one software license you take seriously.

But what about people that don't agree? Surely they have as much right as you to ignore the license and do what they like. If they are developing some closed source software for example, why shouldn't they copy code from something GPLed? So long as it fits their personal morality.

Remember, I'm primarily arguing against unbridled corporate greed with my rants against current copyright law

Fine. But this story is about the App Store, where the majority of apps are from independent developers who are charging 99c.

Re:Piracy = Theft Analogy

[ducomputergeek]

And what do you call it when I insist on $.99 in exchange for being allowed to use the program I wrote and you are using that program and paid me nothing? It cost me time (labor) to write the code, compile the code, go through the checklists to submit to the app stores. I don't work for free. My time is worth something to me. So in a way it is theft. Theft of my time. Time I could have spent earning extra income helping someone with an odd job or time I could have spent going out with friends or even getting a couple extra hours of sleep.

I've had people say to me, "But you should feel proud that people are using your app."

My response is I didn't write that app to get a happy feeling. Happy feelings don't buy coffee. I wrote my apps in the hopes others would find them fun or helpful and in exchange spend a buck that goes towards my coffee fund.

Do I make a lot of money from my apps? I made a little over $8500 last year. It's not replacing my day job yet, but it did buy this laptop and plenty of coffee on the weekends.