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I agree that blocking ads means less money for developers who hope to monetize their apps that way. What I strongly disagree with is calling it "piracy". I find

I agree that blocking ads means less money for developers who hope to monetize their apps that way. What I strongly disagree with is calling it "piracy". I find that statement to be borderline trolling. There's a reason why even you, in your comment, used the word "monetize" instead of outright "sell". Mind that I'm not arguing about the dictionary definition of the word, but about the intent behind its usage. If I went into your application and disabled or circumvented some sort of mandatory payment mechanism, I would be pirating it. If, however, I decide that I do not want to give your application permission to access Internet and your application does not object to this, then I'm just exercising my rights. Likewise, web browser ad blockers are just my way of exercising my rights to filter the content I don't want to see, which is analogous to restricting access to certain sites on my kid's computer or, heck, changing the channel briefly while the ads are on TV.

AretNCarlsen 15y ago
I use "monetize" as a superset of "sell", in that "sell" is usually taken to imply a direct payment by the end user, whereas "monetize" also provides for indirect payments like ad views. You are allowed to decide not to give my application permission to access the internet; the Android Market actually forces you to review the permissions my app requests before allowing installation. The piracy here is that the Cyanogen mod pretends to give internet access, but lies to my application (by lying to the app and pretending that the internet is just unavailable for the moment.)
- CodeMage 15y ago
  Maybe I misunderstood the post, but I believe that you can't fake internet access permission. The way I read it is that the data you were supposed to be able to fake was stuff like phone serial number. As for the "piracy" argument, the line is, as always, blurry. I guess that I could agree to calling it "piracy" if your app somehow verifies whether you have access to a resource on a server and shuts down if you don't, thus preventing me from using your app if I don't "pay" by displaying ads. The fact that I dislike that practice doesn't mean that circumventing it should not be called piracy.
- jrockway 15y ago
  It's not lying. The Internet is unavailable to your app, and it tells your app that. Now, it may be unavailable because the user said, "make the Internet unavailable" instead of being unavailable because the phone is inside a tunnel... but the end result is the same. An action the user took caused your app to be unable to contact the Internet. If this is a problem, pop a dialog saying, "hey, get out of that tunnel if you want to play my game." The "permissions" that a user gives to the device say that the app has permission to use the Internet. The permission does not make the Internet magically 100% available. It may well never be available. All you're getting is permission to use the Internet if the Internet happens to exist. Anyway, I know you're trolling, and that's fine. Because your opinion doesn't matter: it's my phone, my internet connection, and my open-source firmware. Your software is an invited guest. If you don't want your app to run on my phone, don't let it get on my phone. Once you've done that, it's mine to take with me into tunnels (virtual or otherwise) whenever the fuck I want, and there's not a thing in the world you can do to stop me. My house, my rules, so fuck you. Hahahaha!

AretNCarlsen 15y ago

I use "monetize" as a superset of "sell", in that "sell" is usually taken to imply a direct payment by the end user, whereas "monetize" also provides for indirect payments like ad views. You are allowed to decide not to give my application permission to access the internet; the Android Market actually forces you to review the permissions my app requests before allowing installation. The piracy here is that the Cyanogen mod pretends to give internet access, but lies to my application (by lying to the app and pretending that the internet is just unavailable for the moment.)

CodeMage 15y ago
Maybe I misunderstood the post, but I believe that you can't fake internet access permission. The way I read it is that the data you were supposed to be able to fake was stuff like phone serial number. As for the "piracy" argument, the line is, as always, blurry. I guess that I could agree to calling it "piracy" if your app somehow verifies whether you have access to a resource on a server and shuts down if you don't, thus preventing me from using your app if I don't "pay" by displaying ads. The fact that I dislike that practice doesn't mean that circumventing it should not be called piracy.
jrockway 15y ago
It's not lying. The Internet is unavailable to your app, and it tells your app that. Now, it may be unavailable because the user said, "make the Internet unavailable" instead of being unavailable because the phone is inside a tunnel... but the end result is the same. An action the user took caused your app to be unable to contact the Internet. If this is a problem, pop a dialog saying, "hey, get out of that tunnel if you want to play my game." The "permissions" that a user gives to the device say that the app has permission to use the Internet. The permission does not make the Internet magically 100% available. It may well never be available. All you're getting is permission to use the Internet if the Internet happens to exist. Anyway, I know you're trolling, and that's fine. Because your opinion doesn't matter: it's my phone, my internet connection, and my open-source firmware. Your software is an invited guest. If you don't want your app to run on my phone, don't let it get on my phone. Once you've done that, it's mine to take with me into tunnels (virtual or otherwise) whenever the fuck I want, and there's not a thing in the world you can do to stop me. My house, my rules, so fuck you. Hahahaha!