Bouncing, I appreciate your point of view, but you sound really entrenched in it. Thus I'm going to have a hard time debating this with you. My sincerest appologies in advance if my reply comes off as brash.
"there is never a time when any DRM is acceptable, ever. "
That just makes me think that your view is a philisophical one and has nothing to do with the practical situation on the ground. You clearly see black and white here and no shades of grey. It also even feels like you clearly don't care for the plight of those being stolen from/pirated from, but rather, you're reacting viscerally from being inconvenienced with regards to your purchases. I always wonder what people would say if their paycheck was pirated from some guy in another country, how they would feel.
Also, before we go down the road: I know not all piracy is lost sales, but if you believe that nothing is lost, then you are too irrational to even have this conversation. The success of Steam is an easy enough example to point to. Remember too -- we're also talking $1-$5 apps here generally. So affordability is
less likely to be a factor. This is not a $60 game for $600 copy of photoshop that a user could never afford otherwise. Sure, some probably cant, but if they can afford the phone, they are likely able to afford the software.
The reality is that there
are ways for casual pirates to auto-pirate stuff. I've downloaded them and they are very, very effective. I will not discuss them here however. There are also effective ways at slowing down the time from release to crack.
I see casual piracy happening every day, again I am not going to go into the technical details here. But
it's no myth, I ASSURE you. You don't
just have big cracking groups making names for themselves cracking little 99c apps. It's a whole range of people, using a range of methods. (see the Balsamiq link above, his graph sums it up well).
The trick is to stop some of the casual stuff, and if the more adanced guys break your app, then so be it -- but hopefully it will take them a month or two to get around to it. And by then you're on to new features/releases.
At that point, the easier way to get your software is from the market or legitimately, rather than through the hacking groups (some of whom are clearly criminals trying to make money from your software).
You should also know the cracking groups on Android are a different breed than the PC/Video/other media. Many are trying to make money via advertising. One of my apps was pirated that didnt even have copy protection, and thus had nothing to do with any moral high ground. The guy even award himself "points" for what amounted to copy and paste. This clearly isn't your top tier technically inclined hacker. And this was before I had even made $50 from the app.
Anyways, most of your arguments are also talked about in that Balsamiq link I posted above, have a look and see what you think. The piracy stats came from KeyesLab btw. Source:
A Global Piracy Heat Map
Also, the "multiple devices throwing off the stats" theory is a convienient assumtion that I doubt is true. When compiling statistics like this, that would be one of the first, most obvious things to try account for, and factor out. Dismissing statistics as invalid, because you
guess that they didn't account for the obvious, seems irrational at best. You're basically saying that every single user installs legit apps on 2-4 additional devices in the span of 90 days? And/or that the counting had no way to detect re-installs? That's the flip side of it. That's how far off they would have to be for the stats to be flipped the other way.
If you factor in two opposing data anomolies too, like the fact that any user of DroidWall may not get counted (pirate or legit), and that they factored
cancelled puchases as "legitimate", some of that clearly counter-balances multi-device installs. So while those number may be showing a skewed picture, I'm pretty sure the conclusion is the same: there is a shocking amount of piracy that is coming from countries with the Market available. I'd be suprised if you disagreed. Statistics don't need to be perfect to give you a valuable peice of the picture. And I dont think there could have been enough multi-device installs to change that.
Anyways, the point of what I was saying is that some developers are claiming as high as 90%, maybe their stats are off, but that number is most assuredly still shockingly high. And as for where the piracy is coming from, it's clearly not just countries without access to the Market. That excuse just isnt valid anymore.
And no one is arguing for DRM because they think it might be more profitable, it's NOT an added value. This is my work, people are taking my work without paying. I am
not stealing "extra" money from anyone's pocket. That bank analogy is ridiculous and insulting hyperbole.
Also I feel like I should say I was of a similar opinion to you until I sat on this side of the table and gained a bit of perspective. And I too have had issues with frustratingly restrictive and bad, broken DRM. And I'm not 100% convinced I should use it in my apps but I will probably experiment with various means of protecting my livelihood.
I take your concerns to heart, I really do, and the last thing I want is to upset a customer. There is no faster way to a 1 star rating than a customer depreived of his purchase. But at the end of the day philosophies and frustrations don't pay my rent. So that's what I have to weigh, when determining if I can convert some of the pirates to paying customers with a reasonable amount of effort and reasonably low chance of inconviniencing my paying customers. If I can't, then it isn't worth it. If I can, it might very well be. But this is not an easy decision to come by and is something a lot of developers struggle with and we're about the last people you should blame for this situation.
As for ROM Manager, have you thought of emailing Koush to express interest in being able to install his app on a non-market device? I would think he'd be receptive to that considering not all ROMs come with the Market app.
Anyways, try and keep an open mind and I will listen to your opinion but I dont deserve to be ranted at or lectured as "the guy defending DRM". I dont defend it. No one likes it. All I can do explain some of the thinking that leads developers to implement it, and why it is the pirates, and not the devs, that deserve the scorn.
But now I should ago write some code as I've rambled too much...
Have a good night --
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