Comment by doctorpangloss
1 day ago
Should Apple be the only ones allowed to make money? You can't pirate Apple News, iCloud Storage, all sorts of services and conventional media they provide. You can't pirate App Store IAP. You don't have to make a single value judgement to see that the status quo - the only permissible action to take against piracy is to make unassailable DRM - is really just conceding that the fully vertically integrated platforms ought to own anything. Surely it's not good that only Apple is allowed to make money.
That's certainly the status quo. One remedy that comes immediately to mind is to simply ban vertically integrated platforms like that and forcibly break them up.
People here don't like to hear this, but that's the only realistic solution to the current big tech monopolies sucking all the air in the room and spawn-camping small players before they take off.
Those are services that depend on Apple servers. If you also make a service, others can’t pirate it (they’ll have to set up their own server, which means it’s not really your service now).
Of course, this only works if you secure your server side properly. I remember using cracked versions of Wolfram Alpha for Android back in high school and those worked like a charm. I don’t think they lose a lot of revenue though.
It takes a lot of effort to build a system that is both user-friendly and does implement sophisticated mechanisms to prevent bypassing permissions controls. Apple has taken the pains to do that well and then to maintain it against an unending barrage of attacks. So they deserve to make money.
You can definitely pirate IAP. Back in the day it was as easy as using a proxy. Nowadays you need to inject 3rd party software into the app.
Wait, what? Apple is bad because they don’t provide a way for you to pirate content they sell?