Quote:
Originally Posted by Difflugia
Along these lines, chaley, how amenable would you be to removing the license check? The Amazon App Store requires me to allow the Amazon Store app to reconnect to Amazon's server every few weeks or CC quits working and I'd prefer to not do this (and really prefer to remove the Amazon Store and Google Play apps altogether).
I'm curious if you have a feel for how much the rate of piracy might change if the license check were removed.
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I was wondering when someone would bring this up.
We (the three of us involved with CC) have discussed idea this several times, and we keep ending up at the same place. There are two reasons that argue against removing the licensing checks.
First, and by far the most important, is that there are a lot of "services" out there that scoop up unmodified (not pirated) application installation files and offer them to the public. It is sometimes hard to know that these services are not "official" in any way. In particular, there is no mention of money and no attempt to charge for the app. People could honestly think getting an app from one of them is totally acceptable, which in fact it is if the app is free. However, because these services exist we need something to prevent what would be casual and unknowing piracy when people use them. The Google and Amazon licensing schemes are the easiest for us to use. They are supported well enough to be reliable world-wide and offer server answer caching (which you refer to), both of which contribute to minimum impact on our users. It isn't zero impact as witnessed by your situation and a few others we have run into, but it really does seem to be minimal. If someone installs our app from one of these sites, they will eventually be told that the app needs to be licensed. At that point the person must make a choice: buy it or obtain a pirated copy of it. Our hope is that most people will choose the first, but we have no data at all about what really happens.
The second comes from conversations with an IP lawyer friend of mine. He says that the notion of "protect it or lose it" that one finds in English-based common law applies to IP as much as it applies to the walking path across your field. If we do nothing at all to protect the property then we run the risk of losing the right to protect it. I remember seeing this principle in play when I was growing up. Once a year a store next to my school would close one of the entrances to its parking lot, thereby preventing people (cars) from using the parking lot to get from one public road to another. The gate was festooned with a large "Private Property" sign. One day I asked the manager why this was done and that is where I first heard of the problem and one solution to it. It isn't clear what "losing it" would mean in our situation, but it does seem that doing the minimum makes sense. However, if it weren't for the first reason we would ignore this one.
Final note: we have considered changing to ad-supported, but decided that we would rather deal with the piracy than subject our users to ads.