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Within a month of releasing my very successful iPhone app TextPics, there were several Chinese clones using a slightly modified icon, all of my content, my desi

Within a month of releasing my very successful iPhone app TextPics, there were several Chinese clones using a slightly modified icon, all of my content, my design, layout, and with names like "TextPics Pro" and "TextPics(R)" or "TextPics+". As annoying as this was and confusing to my customers, it got even worse. Theft in China does not stop at the dev level, oh no. Comparing my Google analytics app usage to my Apple purchases in China was even more depressing. It turned out China was by far my biggest country for usage... And just about at the bottom of my list for revenue. The Chinese were simply stealing the app with their cracked iPhones. I see no way to win here. And this is no blind hate for the Chinese. I have a Chinese wife from the mainland, I study Chinese Rosetta Stone daily, and I've been to China multiple times for pleasure. I know these people. As a culture, they consider it laughable and stupid to pay for something they could otherwise steal. I've had this conversation with enough Chinese at this point. So seriously I don't see how I can take that country or it's people seriously from a tech biz standpoint if I can't trust their ethics.

analyst74 14y ago
This is very interesting. Genuine question: how is pirating PC games, songs and movies acceptable while pirating apps is not? Edit: this is not a question toward parent, but rather the general public, as I kind of get the sense that pirating is somewhat acceptable under certain circumstances while not others. Where is the line?
- rodly 14y ago
  Where did he say pirating anything was okay?
  - chimi 14y ago
    It is funny how if it's copying a developers HTML5 game, it's stealing, but if it's a movie or song, well... that's just copying, because the creator still has a copy -- that's not stealing. The level of hypocrisy around here is incredible. The only occurrence of the text string "not stealing" in this whole tread is in my post right here.
    - lindenr 14y ago
      You didn't answer the question. No-one ever said pirating was okay (or "not stealing"). Also, I think you're wrong: pirating a movie/book/whatever will at most result in the price of one movie/book being lost from the creators (given that I may or may not have bought it legally otherwise). Copying an app, on the other hand, can result in a (theoretically) unlimited number of apps being purchased where the money doesn't go to the original creators. That is more like ripping a dvd and posting it to a torrent site. I'm not saying pirating is defensible, but downloading something illegally is far less harmful than copying someone's app.
      - simonbrown 14y ago
        What about posting movies/books/whatever to trackers in the first place?
    - betterth 14y ago
      Comparing theft of a product with the intent of resale to theft of a product with the intent of personal consumption is disingenuous. Stealing something to resell it for a profit is rightly a much worse transgression than stealing it for personal use, as you're only denying a single potential sale (your own) as opposed to actually stealing multiple REAL sales and keeping all the profit.
      - chimi 14y ago
        "... than stealing it for personal use ..." As long as both instances are stealing, I have no problem. Relative badness is another debate, but I doubt we'd disagree much on that.
        Dylan16807 14y ago
        It's not hard to argue that only the one that involves money is theft. Not that that argument is exactly where I would stand, but I think you're on shaky ground to call them the same crime with the difference being magnitude.
    - 14y ago
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  Well, certainly some people are solely motivated by it being free, and don't care it's illegal. Not everyone thinks into it as much as people on HN do.
- ftwinnovations 14y ago
  I'm not sure if I gave the impression that I think pirating games, songs, or movies is acceptable to me but it is certainly not. I have paid for every song I own, every movie I've watched, and every game I've played. No exceptions.
msie 14y ago
- Ok, it was not obvious to me from first reading of this. The content was copied and not the code. So there are many copycat versions of your app in the store. - Copying is an issue everywhere (Zynga games, dating apps, camera apps, texting apps, twitter clones anyone?) Maybe not as blatant as your case. Your idea is easily copyable and I've learned elsewhere on HN that if the uniqueness of your idea is the only selling point of your product then you will not succeed against competitors. And you should expect competitors. Maybe complaining to Apple will help. - Yeah, pirating is an issue everywhere (thepiratebay.org anyone?) and not just in China - I'm just getting the impression that some areas of app development are not profitable. If you're trying to sell to consumers it could be a huge uphill battle on many fronts. Crowded app store, race to the bottom on pricing, copycat products (not just from the Chinese)... [Edit] - I recall reading a success story on HN about an app developer that created a better version of another app (iphone app of a talking elf or something) and made a profit on it. He was celebrated too. So that's the flip side of your situation. The developer was from Silicon Valley and not China.
- ftwinnovations 14y ago
  The app was very successful, and I'm quite happy with my earnings from it, but that was not really the point of my comment. And I am also from California, not China, nor am I Chinese or even Asian. My point was only that the Chinese specifically are much more prone to steal and/or copy software than any other group I know of. I know this firsthand from speaking openly with many Chinese, including my wife. And certainly my stats of app usage vs revenue in China have proven this conclusively to me. Nearly nobody buys it there, and yet China shows the most app usage!
  - tangothedog 14y ago
    In my opinion, this is an unfortunate side effect of the "growth at all costs" economic policy of China. Money becomes the only thing that matters -- IP, the environment, even the health of citizens is second-class. As China further develops, we will hopefully see attitudes change. I don't believe you see this level of theft/piracy in more mature economies like Singapore or Taiwan (not China, but similar in that they are ethnically majority Chinese).
msie 14y ago
Can't you stem piracy by requiring users of your app to login to a server? So that pirating the app isn't enough to use it?
- mike-cardwell 14y ago
  This requires you to keep a server running. And unless the server is actually providing some service which is critical to the app functionality, somebody will just fire up their favourite hex editor and modify the binary so it doesn't need to speak to the server.
  - ftwinnovations 14y ago
    AND my customers that aren't stealing it would down vote it for the annoying inconvenience of having to log in for little to no value :/ The app store is a rough place.
tlogan 14y ago
You have to understand that certain applications are prone to be "cloned" - there is 7B people on the planet and there is big chance if something is successful and can be easily cloned WILL BE cloned. It really does not matter if it is Chinese or not. If your thing is REALLY successful then Samwer brothers will clone it.
- enjo 14y ago
  I think you're being rather flippant here. Cloned would seem to imply that they did the work to re-craft it. This is just stealing. Hell they're directing traffic to his servers. To be more precise, it's clear copyright infringement. Except that it's happening in China so we can do nothing about it.
  - msie 14y ago
    - They couldn't have just stolen it. There are slight differences in the UI plus the binary has creator information embedded in it. The app is simple enough. I think it would be harder to take the source binary and modify it than to clone it. - I'm not sure whether he maintains servers or not. If he did then he can do something about it. All I know is that he gets app usage information from pirated copies. Those pirated copies would be stolen but they would also not be obtained from the app store. There are two things happening: devs ripping off his ideas, users pirating his app
  - tlogan 14y ago
    Ok - here is one clone app of the original: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cute-textpics/id537228845?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cute-textpics/id537228845?mt=... So if they did something illegal, then it should be easy to remove it iTunes App store. Correct?
    - ftwinnovations 14y ago
      Sadly no. Luckily I have the trademark on the name TextPics so I have these apps using my name removed every now and then, however the process is very slow and manual thanks purely to Apples horrid process. With a clone on android google took care of it promptly and placed the word TextPics in a database of trademarks to avoid future violations. But then there is the non-illegal clones that stole my content, design, icon, etc. Now they call themselves things like Text Pictures. Is this not wrong? Funny part is its maybe 90% Chinese. I think there may have been a few Russian ones.

analyst74 14y ago

This is very interesting. Genuine question: how is pirating PC games, songs and movies acceptable while pirating apps is not? Edit: this is not a question toward parent, but rather the general public, as I kind of get the sense that pirating is somewhat acceptable under certain circumstances while not others. Where is the line?

rodly 14y ago
Where did he say pirating anything was okay?
- chimi 14y ago
  It is funny how if it's copying a developers HTML5 game, it's stealing, but if it's a movie or song, well... that's just copying, because the creator still has a copy -- that's not stealing. The level of hypocrisy around here is incredible. The only occurrence of the text string "not stealing" in this whole tread is in my post right here.
  - lindenr 14y ago
    You didn't answer the question. No-one ever said pirating was okay (or "not stealing"). Also, I think you're wrong: pirating a movie/book/whatever will at most result in the price of one movie/book being lost from the creators (given that I may or may not have bought it legally otherwise). Copying an app, on the other hand, can result in a (theoretically) unlimited number of apps being purchased where the money doesn't go to the original creators. That is more like ripping a dvd and posting it to a torrent site. I'm not saying pirating is defensible, but downloading something illegally is far less harmful than copying someone's app.
    - simonbrown 14y ago
      What about posting movies/books/whatever to trackers in the first place?
  - betterth 14y ago
    Comparing theft of a product with the intent of resale to theft of a product with the intent of personal consumption is disingenuous. Stealing something to resell it for a profit is rightly a much worse transgression than stealing it for personal use, as you're only denying a single potential sale (your own) as opposed to actually stealing multiple REAL sales and keeping all the profit.
    - chimi 14y ago
      "... than stealing it for personal use ..." As long as both instances are stealing, I have no problem. Relative badness is another debate, but I doubt we'd disagree much on that.
      - Dylan16807 14y ago
        It's not hard to argue that only the one that involves money is theft. Not that that argument is exactly where I would stand, but I think you're on shaky ground to call them the same crime with the difference being magnitude.
  - 14y ago
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
Well, certainly some people are solely motivated by it being free, and don't care it's illegal. Not everyone thinks into it as much as people on HN do.
ftwinnovations 14y ago
I'm not sure if I gave the impression that I think pirating games, songs, or movies is acceptable to me but it is certainly not. I have paid for every song I own, every movie I've watched, and every game I've played. No exceptions.

msie 14y ago

- Ok, it was not obvious to me from first reading of this. The content was copied and not the code. So there are many copycat versions of your app in the store. - Copying is an issue everywhere (Zynga games, dating apps, camera apps, texting apps, twitter clones anyone?) Maybe not as blatant as your case. Your idea is easily copyable and I've learned elsewhere on HN that if the uniqueness of your idea is the only selling point of your product then you will not succeed against competitors. And you should expect competitors. Maybe complaining to Apple will help. - Yeah, pirating is an issue everywhere (thepiratebay.org anyone?) and not just in China - I'm just getting the impression that some areas of app development are not profitable. If you're trying to sell to consumers it could be a huge uphill battle on many fronts. Crowded app store, race to the bottom on pricing, copycat products (not just from the Chinese)... [Edit] - I recall reading a success story on HN about an app developer that created a better version of another app (iphone app of a talking elf or something) and made a profit on it. He was celebrated too. So that's the flip side of your situation. The developer was from Silicon Valley and not China.

ftwinnovations 14y ago
The app was very successful, and I'm quite happy with my earnings from it, but that was not really the point of my comment. And I am also from California, not China, nor am I Chinese or even Asian. My point was only that the Chinese specifically are much more prone to steal and/or copy software than any other group I know of. I know this firsthand from speaking openly with many Chinese, including my wife. And certainly my stats of app usage vs revenue in China have proven this conclusively to me. Nearly nobody buys it there, and yet China shows the most app usage!
- tangothedog 14y ago
  In my opinion, this is an unfortunate side effect of the "growth at all costs" economic policy of China. Money becomes the only thing that matters -- IP, the environment, even the health of citizens is second-class. As China further develops, we will hopefully see attitudes change. I don't believe you see this level of theft/piracy in more mature economies like Singapore or Taiwan (not China, but similar in that they are ethnically majority Chinese).

msie 14y ago

Can't you stem piracy by requiring users of your app to login to a server? So that pirating the app isn't enough to use it?

mike-cardwell 14y ago
This requires you to keep a server running. And unless the server is actually providing some service which is critical to the app functionality, somebody will just fire up their favourite hex editor and modify the binary so it doesn't need to speak to the server.
- ftwinnovations 14y ago
  AND my customers that aren't stealing it would down vote it for the annoying inconvenience of having to log in for little to no value :/ The app store is a rough place.

tlogan 14y ago

You have to understand that certain applications are prone to be "cloned" - there is 7B people on the planet and there is big chance if something is successful and can be easily cloned WILL BE cloned. It really does not matter if it is Chinese or not. If your thing is REALLY successful then Samwer brothers will clone it.

enjo 14y ago
I think you're being rather flippant here. Cloned would seem to imply that they did the work to re-craft it. This is just stealing. Hell they're directing traffic to his servers. To be more precise, it's clear copyright infringement. Except that it's happening in China so we can do nothing about it.
- msie 14y ago
  - They couldn't have just stolen it. There are slight differences in the UI plus the binary has creator information embedded in it. The app is simple enough. I think it would be harder to take the source binary and modify it than to clone it. - I'm not sure whether he maintains servers or not. If he did then he can do something about it. All I know is that he gets app usage information from pirated copies. Those pirated copies would be stolen but they would also not be obtained from the app store. There are two things happening: devs ripping off his ideas, users pirating his app
- tlogan 14y ago
  Ok - here is one clone app of the original: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cute-textpics/id537228845?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cute-textpics/id537228845?mt=... So if they did something illegal, then it should be easy to remove it iTunes App store. Correct?
  - ftwinnovations 14y ago
    Sadly no. Luckily I have the trademark on the name TextPics so I have these apps using my name removed every now and then, however the process is very slow and manual thanks purely to Apples horrid process. With a clone on android google took care of it promptly and placed the word TextPics in a database of trademarks to avoid future violations. But then there is the non-illegal clones that stole my content, design, icon, etc. Now they call themselves things like Text Pictures. Is this not wrong? Funny part is its maybe 90% Chinese. I think there may have been a few Russian ones.