I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I don’t pirate stuff. Obviously, I have OS X running on a Dell Mini 9 (though I would argue that’s different, another post for another day). You can follow me online all day long if you want to get more details than that. In any case, I *do* get bothered sometimes with the stupidity of humans, and today that reached a new high, adding arrogance to the mix. Here’s the setup:
There’s this developer, who created an application. This application’s sole purpose is to ‘crack’ the various applications found in the iPhone App Store, so that users can access them for free, when they should be paying for them. It’s not like iPhone apps are expensive, most are under $10, and there’s apparently a major selection of $.99 apps. So this guy writes an application that is designed to discount all these developers’ hard work. Nice.
The great irony, then, is that some other dude comes along, sees that the original developer didn’t register any of the ‘Crackulous’ names around the internet (crackulous.net, the crackulous username on most social networking services, etc), and is charging folks $10 for the application. Even better, he’s spreading the word that sites offering the application for free have probably inserted a virus or something in it, and to report them immediately!
As you might have guessed, the original developers are pissed. Pissed because someone is now working to prevent them from benefitting from an application that they worked hard to create. Wait, what’s that? The very application THEY’RE fighting for is designed to also prevent the original developers of iPhone Apps from benefitting from an applicaton that they worked hard to create?! You really can’t make this stuff up, folks.
The folks at Gizmodo had an interesting conversaton with the developer, as well.
The moral of the story, though, is if you create a product, before you launch/release it, make sure you’ve registered all the domains/usernames that would be appropriate.
Ricky Cadden 