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Infinite Loop / The Apple Ecosystem

Developer fights iPhone app piracy by turning cracks into demos

One iPhone developer, Ben Chatelain, is taking piracy matters into his own …

Chatelain's cheeky message to "pirates" includes a message about stealing food from the mouths of babes.

iPhone app developer Ben Chatelain was practically fuming when he found out that his app Full Screen Web Browser had been cracked and posted to iPhone warez site just four days after release. He decided that he wasn't going to just take things lying down; he was going to do something about it. So far, his experiment with anti-piracy measures seems to be working.

Though he was upset about the news that his app had been pirated, Chatelain was hesitant to add "anti-theft" measures that would cause problems for legitimate users. "I didn't want our app to crash for legitimate users or to crash during Apple’s review process and get rejected from the App Store," he wrote in his blog. As a result, he came up with an idea that essentially converts a pirated version of his app into a use-limited demo.

Since the anti-piracy measure is controlled by the server, it can be disabled at anytime should it prove problematic for users that purchased a legitimate copy. In fact, Chatelain didn't flip the switch on the anti-piracy measure until he had already released the updated version of Full Screen Web Browser. His server logs revealed that there were 5,745 legitimate users and 560 "pirates." That translates to about 9.75 percent of users who were running the cracked version at the time.

After flipping the switch, Chatelain's server tracked 984 users using a cracked copy of his app. In two days, 39 users got the "trial expired" message after launching the app 10 times. Five users went on to buy the software through the real App Store (which sells for just 99�). Amazed at the 13 percent conversion rate, Chatelain feels good about the results so far. "While this is still a small data set, it is highly encouraging that this approach to piracy is working," he wrote.

It's a widely held notion that many of those who pirate apps wouldn't buy legitimate copies in the first place. Certainly, this applies to the majority of those who make illegal copies, but according to the creator of, plenty of iPhone app "pirates" are simply looking for a way to try an app before spending money on it. Apple could easily solve this problem by creating a sanctioned way for developers to offer fully-functioning demos, and Chatelain's method effectively does exactly that, while not affecting legitimate users.

Some users object to apps that "phone home," but it should be noted that plenty of apps, iPhone or otherwise, ping a server for tracking purposes, such as those that offer ad-supported "free" versions. Chatelain's method seems to offer a compromise between Apple's walled garden and jailbreakers that download cracked apps for free. 

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