The reason why piracy is so rampant is the fact that it’s so damn easy. Back during the days of dial-up, it was hard. I remember having to download ripped games (games that don’t have any music or video to cut down download size) and using download managers to auto-connect when disconnected. I left my computer on overnight for a week just to download the latest version of Roxio Easy Media Creator (?). These days it’s a simple matter of going to your favourite BT tracker, doing a quick search and voila, minutes or hours later your download is complete.

You then have shady sites like PirateBay attempting to JUSTIFY their existence on the internet as being a fair and honourable website. It’s like having a company called “Organised Crime PTY LTD”.

Okay, so we’ve all walked down the path of piracy but these days pirating apps isn’t as “useful” as it was say 5 years ago. Before people would pirate an application because it’s necessary to do something but these days there’s open source alternatives that can do the same thing if not better. There are exceptions though like GIMP but even programs like Open Office are slowly catching up to the game. The only challenge now are stuff like games and media. I own perhaps 15% of the music in my arsenal which should be substantially more than the average person. I don’t know anybody that buys music online and I for one probably won’t start either until they’re dirt cheap.

I recently purchased my first iPhone app, I came across it browsing through the app store. It’s an application that tells you your usage details for your phone/internet. I did a bit more research, had a look at the free alternatives which were non-existent or just bad, had a look at the paid alternatives (crappy reviews) and decided on a whim to just buy it. It’s called iiQuota and now I can keep track of my phone usage without having to painfully log into optus. I bought another App yesterday called Tripview which helps you catch public transport around Sydney. The timetable is all stored locally (which can also be updated) so you don’t have to go online to view the timetable.

Alternatively, I could jailbreak my iphone, install a program called “Installous” and simply get the applications illegally. Installous is actually a legitimate application designed to install custom ipa files. But then there’s Appulous which provide access to cracked applications. Now the reason behind Appulous is that the appstore does not provide a try-before-paying option for their apps. I beg to differ. A lot of decent developers provide a free alternative with some features missing or compensate through the use of ads. In the free version of Tripview for example, saving your trips have been disabled. Their reasoning behind their service is just another lame excuse to steal from developers.

On a side note I also learnt that itunes does not give you an option to “confirm” before purchasing an app. I accidentally clicked “Buy now” and it immediately processed the request. Thankfully, the amount was credited back to me after filing a report but according to Apple “this is a one-time exception”.