Illegal video on youtube + TPA android hack: do something!

[Jeff Strong]

Doesn't matter. His Blogger link goes to the illegal page. Same in the Discussions and About sections.

Yeah, but if he doesn't have any videos up, no one would actually go to his youtube profile page. Best thing to do is delete the links in this thread so that search engine crawlers don't pick up the links because that would just give him more publicity.

Edit: I went ahead and removed the links.

 

[Worf]

A chore to find an updated pirated version, agreed, but with "interestingly broken" I meant that it'll play for a little bit, then for instance come up with a screen announcing the version is unauthorized, that FS is a small company and that every sale makes a difference, and then go through the Play Store, to make it easy to buy a legit copy. Doing so however needs to be done in a way that never, ever legitimate users will see this. What was that app again that started tweeting stuff about being a pirate?

That doesn't work, because it'll just be patched around.

The other thing is, a cracked app can't detect it's cracked - you can on iOS because there's several changes that must be done in order for the kernel to run it (which the app can detect), but on Android, it's not possible because as far as the APK is concerned, unless you're running on 4.2 or higher, the APK that's executed is the same as what Google Play gives out.

There were some that used an API to determine license status, but even those apps have automated crackers that work in a general fashion by patching out the bytecode.

And that app that tweeted it was pirated? It was on iOS, and it happened to legitimate users of the app - the pirates didn't even have a chance. But that won't work if the user didn't link in an twitter account or other account (Android does NOT have OS integration for twitter and Facebook, unlike iOS).

And that's where we stand today. Steam piracy is rampant - any big release has been pirated and Valve's attitude has been that it's better to allow it than to be draconian about it.

Farsight can't really do much - other than not publish on high-piracy platforms like Android and PC.