How do you feel about UK Channel5's advocacy of piracy on iOS?

[schplurg]

I wanted to see if jailbreaking is illegal:

Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets

The new batch of exemptions illustrate the fundamentally arbitrary nature of the DMCA's exemption process. For the next three years, you'll be allowed to jailbreak smartphones but not tablet computers. You'll be able to unlock phones purchased before January 2013 but not phones purchased after that. It will be legal to rip DVDs to use an excerpt in a documentary, but not to play it on your iPad. None of these distinctions makes very much sense. But Congress probably deserves more blame for this than the Librarian of Congress.

An interesting opinion from the author:

Here's a better approach: circumventing copy protection schemes shouldn't be against the law in the first place. DRM schemes harm legitimate users more than they deter piracy. Indeed, as the phone unlocking example illustrates, many uses of DRM have nothing to do with copyright infringement in the first place. Rather, they're a convenient legal pretext for limiting competition and locking consumers into proprietary products. We shouldn't be using copyright law as a backdoor means to give such anti-competitive practices the force of law.

Ya maybe, whatever. I don't know if this article is 100% accurate btw. I looked up no other sources.

I jailbroke my old iPhone 4 a few months ago. I found that customization was very limited, I mean you can't have the weather displayed on your home screen or have "widgets" there like some other phones (I think?). Winterboard sucks.

There are some very cool free apps though that let you do some very useful things. I don't use this phone but it was interesting to play with. I do think the extra features are cool, and I could find a use for a jailbroken phone for sure. Just eliminating the need to "swipe" every single time I turn on my phone would be nice.

I've heard some games won't run on JB'd phones. Anyone know why? Can we design games that deliberately don't work on JB devices, and if so, would the loss of "honest jailbreaker sales" be worth it if your game couldn't be hacked? I'm thinking yes. Or are all games and apps hackable now?

Piracy isn't something I put much thought into. If Adobe and EA and all the big guys can't keep their stuff from being pirated...well?

I'd say if you want a phone - or any other gadget - with more customization options and freedom, don't buy anything from Apple. In fact, I usually say that anyways.

[Mr Qwak]

Originally Posted by JBRUU

Have you, or any of those in this thread, ever jailbroken an idevice? Because all of you are painfully unanaware of the plethora of productivity and sheer customization that is open to you. Literally anything can be tweaked, you can radically alter the look of your device so it looks like it's running, say Honeycomb. You can constantly monitor your RAM usage. SBsettings. Display recorder. Activator. Download files off the Internet. Change your default browser. Changing wallpaper (battery hog though). iFile. Modding games. Emulators. Barrel. Infinifolders. You imagine it, it's probably possible.

So please don't automatically assume that all or even most who jailbreak do so to pirate games. It's certainly possible, but then again will you automatically assume that every Android owner pirates games because it's even easier on that system?

Some common sense and knowledge surrounding the topic is advised.

Yep, I have done the dirty on an old iOS device (original iPhone) of mine, and I'm sure loads of people do jail-break for non-piracy reasons. Am not really saying everyone who jail-breaks is a bad-un; it's just the net-effect of having a jail-break available is that it facilitates piracy, which harms any platform (as it becomes harder for developers to make money on a platform, they'll naturally move elsewhere).

Even if Channel5 are sitting on the fence, the very fact that they're drawing attention to the availability of a jail-break, is pretty uncool in my book (and can only make the piracy issue on iOS, worse than it already is).

I like developing on iOS, just hope it doesn't get to be like Android (just as a side-note, game I released on Android only sold 1% of what it did on iOS, in one month).

[mr.Ugly]

well people who are tech savy enough to understand what a jailbreak is and what you can do with it.. won't need any tv channel webpage to tell them so..

anyone else.. well somehow i doubt they fiddle around with their very expensive gadgets to find out..

so overall it does not make a difference.. and i am pro jailbreak.. if believe the enduser is allowed to modify his own gadget to whatever extents he likes..

if he does something illegal with it.. thats a different point and has nothing todo with jailbreaking itself.. a jailbreak does not put warez on your phone.. the pirating user does.. and thats a completly different story imho..

as for the article.. pretty points shallow one.. with a one sentence explanation.. way to go.. channel 5

[JBRUU]

But honestly as developers don't you think the overall cheapness of the AppStore and the "race to the bottom" attitude is more hurtful than piracy? I've never released or coded anything for iOS so I have little to zero knowledge of what I'm talking about, but I often see games flop due to people not wanting to spend money on $3,$5, $7 apps. They wait for them to go free or drop to $.99.

I'm not condoning it, but those who pirate games wouldn't necessarily buy them if that was the only way to obtain said app, they'd probably just forget about it. Those aren't necessarily sales you would have were jailbreaking nonexistent.

[mr.Ugly]

imho there is no race to the bottom anymore.. we already ushered into the free to play domaine for quite some time..

the question is rather how to monetize your game after the entry fee. no matter if its 99cents, 3$ or free to begin with thats propably not enough to make an roi.

how to earn a dime from 50k downloads instead of a million and to not drop like a stone into the app ocean.

well the market changes so fast and its actually very interesting how indies try to addapt.. how they succeed and how they fail.. how much they mimic the bigger devs and how sometimes small details have an huge impact.

[Connector]

Originally Posted by JBRUU

But honestly as developers don't you think the overall cheapness of the AppStore and the "race to the bottom" attitude is more hurtful than piracy? I've never released or coded anything for iOS so I have little to zero knowledge of what I'm talking about, but I often see games flop due to people not wanting to spend money on $3,$5, $7 apps. They wait for them to go free or drop to $.99.

I'm not condoning it, but those who pirate games wouldn't necessarily buy them if that was the only way to obtain said app, they'd probably just forget about it. Those aren't necessarily sales you would have were jailbreaking nonexistent.

Piraters steal. It is illegal.

What you are talking about is legit marketplace tactics by BOTH the consumers and developers. There is no good guy, bad guy here.

I don't think it is fair to equate the two. The richest people in this world are very cheap, and look where it gets them.

[JBRUU]

Originally Posted by Connector

Piraters steal. It is illegal.

What you are talking about is legit marketplace tactics by BOTH the consumers and developers. There is no good guy, bad guy here.

I don't think it is fair to equate the two. The richest people in this world are very cheap, and look where it gets them.

When did I say that didn't pirates steal or that it wasn't illegal?

However, just because they stole a piece of software doesn't mean that they were going to pay for it in the first place. Thus, piracy doesn't hurt developers as much as the numbers may suggest. That, and only that, was my point.

[Connector]

Originally Posted by JBRUU

When did I say that didn't pirates steal or that it wasn't illegal?

However, just because they stole a piece of software doesn't mean that they were going to pay for it in the first place. Thus, piracy doesn't hurt developers as much as the numbers may suggest. That, and only that, was my point.

I still beg to differ on your view of piracy. I have read numerous reports of Android apps getting pirated with a rate over 99%. So piracy hurts. So by saying that piracy doesn't hurt developers much because these people wouldn't buy them seems illogical to me. If piracy was really hard to do, or you went to jail for doing it, many of these so called pirates would actually buy games.

The marketplace is what it is. It is a ecosystem bound by Apple, Developers, Publishers, and the consumers. Would it be better for developers to have games $30 or more? Maybe, remember if games were expensive like this, almost everyone would pirate or not buy games. So I don't think it would help, it would promote piracy.

Anyway, it just doesn't seem piracy is that much of a problem the way you write about it. And personally I like a ecosystem with cheaper prices to promote people buying games, not stealing them.

[JBRUU]

Originally Posted by Connector

I still beg to differ on your view of piracy. I have read numerous reports of Android apps getting pirated with a rate over 99%. So piracy hurts. So by saying that piracy doesn't hurt developers much because these people wouldn't buy them seems illogical to me. If piracy was really hard to do, or you went to jail for doing it, many of these so called pirates would actually buy games.

The marketplace is what it is. It is a ecosystem bound by Apple, Developers, Publishers, and the consumers. Would it be better for developers to have games $30 or more? Maybe, remember if games were expensive like this, almost everyone would pirate or not buy games. So I don't think it would help, it would promote piracy.

Anyway, it just doesn't seem piracy is that much of a problem the way you write about it. And personally I like a ecosystem with cheaper prices to promote people buying games, not stealing them.

I never said piracy doesn't hurt developers. You just plain misunderstood me. What I said is that just because, say, 100 people pirate an app doesn't mean a developer necessarily lost 100 sales.

I don't know how to make it more clear than that.