I Just Googled All Over Myself

You'll never guess it, but someone posted about this blog on a forum that I don't read.

The poster pretty much took one of my posts verbatim and prefixed it with his own verbage. It's unclear what words were his and which were mine, but ohwell.. at least he linked back to this blog at the end of his post.

My dear readers, I am truly flattered. However, in the future, if you feel the need to quote me, then please do so properly. Use quotation marks and cite your references clearly. Even better, just link back here! Teacher will give you a shiny star if you do so!

What was interesting about the thread was this particular comment in post #7,

Cat and mouse game with the hackers usually being the ones one step ahead. DRM, hack protection, copy protection, etc, just don't work. They ALWAYS get circumvented. They just piss off those who are always gonna pay for your app. Ignore the others.

The best example I can think of is Spore (although not directly related to iPhone apps). Extremely tight anti-piracy and all it achieved was making it the most pirated game ever and pissed off the loyal customer base.

Make good apps and target them at honest ppl.

See.. cite and quote!

In any case it is clearly evident that this particular poster didn't read my rantings and ravings about being subversive.

For the record, I love to steal. I've been stealing cable and satellite for years. I also steal the hearts of the ladies, but that's a story for my other blog.

Prevention will lead to a cat-and-mouse game as the poster indicated. What I am advocating here is to let those zit-faced teens pirate your software and distribute it far and wide. You have the means to detect a cracked IPA and now you can act accordingly BUT subversively!

Create a list of pirated high scores. Show a help screen that says PAY ME BEFORE I HELP YOU or even YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN, BUB.

What about creating a meaningful comparison of paid versus pirated users?

This is a genius idea my readers because I'm a genius.

If any of you are brave enough to do this and share the statistics with me then I will post your results (anonymously) here.

Now where's my shiny star?