The Windows App Store is Full of Pirate Streaming Apps (torrentfreak.com)

Ernesto Van der Sar, reporting for TorrentFreak: When we were browsing through the "top free" apps in the Windows Store, our attention was drawn to several applications that promoted "free movies" including various Hollywood blockbusters such as "Wonder Woman," "Spider-Man: Homecoming," and "The Mummy." Initially, we assumed that a pirate app may have slipped past Microsoft's screening process. However, the 'problem' doesn't appear to be isolated. There are dozens of similar apps in the official store that promise potential users free movies, most with rave reviews. Most of the applications work on multiple platforms including PC, mobile, and the Xbox. They are pretty easy to use and rely on the familiar grid-based streaming interface most sites and services use. Pick a movie or TV-show, click the play button, and off you go. The sheer number of piracy apps in the Windows Store, using names such as "Free Movies HD," "Free Movies Online 2020," and "FreeFlix HQ," came as a surprise to us. In particular, because the developers make no attempt to hide their activities, quite the opposite.

Comments

Say it ain't so

[nospam007]

There's also apps called 'browsers' who can be used to buy knives, guns, viruses, chemicals, bomb-building materials, cars to run people over..., not only apps violating some imaginary 'intellectual' 'property'.

Re:The what? "Windows Store"?

[Bert64]

Piracy has always been microsoft's biggest ally...
They may pay lip service to anti-piracy efforts, but were it not for piracy microsoft wouldn't be in the position they are in today. Microsoft depend on lock-in and inertia, and a huge proportion of those users who are locked in got that way with pirate versions.

If you couldn't pirate windows or its applications, then millions of users would have found something else that they could obtain for free, which would likely have resulted in millions more linux users. Many users can't or won't pay for software, and in eastern europe, asia and africa pretty much all software is pirated.

If there were that many active linux users, there would be very little (if any) windows specific software out there, it would be much easier for users in the west to switch away from windows and many would do so. windows if it still existed at all would end up as an expensive niche brand, rather like osx is, running on expensive niche hardware.

Re:Uh.. this isn't Debian

[Bert64]

There's a difference between something like rsync, which *can* be used to download pirated content, and "Free HD Movie Player" which is designed specifically to do so.

You are spot on about the quality aspect, windows is extremely poor quality software and its users have very low expectations as a result. Regular crashing and malware outbreaks are considered normal and unavoidable...

But windows *does* badly need a properly vetted store, because it is *claiming* to be suitable for average users when clearly this is not the case.

If you're an android, ios or (most distros) linux user, you don't need much knowledge to be able to install software - you select what you want to install from the repository provided to you by the system and you'll be safe.
If your a windows user, you not only require significantly more effort/knowledge to find the installation files and manually run through the installer, but you also need to be sufficiently clued up to verify the source of those files.
My grandma can manage to safely install software on an ios, android or ubuntu... She wouldn't be able to do it safely on windows.

People say this about linux all the time, but truly it's windows that's not ready for the desktop. It's only suitable for geeks who understand what they're doing.