SOPODS: Don’t Bother Pirating, We already know about it.

Posted on March 8th, 2009. Written by Arron.

Today I received a tip-off from Ben Chatelain of Sopods about the new version of their App Store app Full Screen Web Browser. The app was released onto the store about a month back now, and was the first mainstream full screen browser for iPhone and iPod touch ..

Since its launch on February 12, 2009, Full Screen Web Browser has been downloaded over 66,000 times (legitimately). It is currently in the App Store Top 100 Paid Apps list in 10 countries and in the Top 20 Utilities in 23 countries (including the US).

However, things didn’t quite go to plan for Chatelain and Sopods at first. Chatelain explained that within the first 30 hours of Full Screen Web Browser going on sale, pirated copies became available, and after this nearly 10% of the copies of the 1.1 version of Full Screen Web Browser being used globally, were cracked. He explained that this was obviously a major issue that needed resolving fast, and that current users of stolen copies of his Full Screen Web Browser [App Store] would soon be disappointed.

Today, the firm is announcing that the new 1.1 update to Full Screen Web Browser implements groundbreaking new anti-piracy measures for the iPhone platform.

“Within four days of the initial release, a Google Alert informed me of the fact that a cracked copy of Full Screen Web Browser 1.0 had been made public on Appulo.us. I was infuriated and immediately began researching ways to have the app detect when it was cracked and to do something nasty like shut down or self-destruct. I ran across some great info posted by iPhoneCrackDetector on how to detect when the app is cracked. It boils down to looking for a specific modification to the Info.plist file which makes the iPhone believe the app is from Apple, bypassing the normal FairPlay security certificate checks.

After finding this, I was hesitant to add any anti-theft measures in case the logic wasn’t correct. I didn’t want our app to crash for legitimate users or to crash during Apple’s review process and get rejected from the App Store. So, I started working on a server callback process to simply alert us when the app was cracked so that we could gauge the impact and come up with a plan for how to handle it.”

- BenChatelain.com (Source)

SOPODS has devised a mechanism to enable demoware functionality in cracked copies of Full Screen Web Browser, based on the advise posted by John Gruber on Daring Fireball. With this new system, Chatelain was able to track how many times the application was used, and program the app to react accordingly.

With v1.1 of Full Screen Web Browser, the cracked copy refuses to run after 10 uses, and the user receives the following message:

“You are running a pirated copy of Full Screen Web Browser and have used it beyond the trial period. Purchasing a legal copy helps support independent software development and will help me feed my 1-year-old baby.”

Once the message displays, the application is then as good as dead. At this point the user is then presented with one of two options:

- Shut the app down and return to the homescreen
- Goto iTunes and purchase a legal copy ($0.99).

Pretty nifty aye? I don’t know about you but if I was a developer, I’d probably do the same. People have to learn that a lot of hard work and effort goes into bringing these applications to market, and the fact that it is now so blatantly easy to crack them for everyone’s free use, is appalling. I for one support what Chatelain is trying to achieve with this new system, and hope in the future more developers will take it upon themselves to research into it too.

If you’d like to read more about the system used by Ben, and further details of this anti-piracy solution, you can find all his thoughts on his blog. Of course, for the people wanting to support Chatelain, you can buy Full Screen Web Browser below for just 59p / $0.99.

Download size: 0.1MB
Released on: 4th Mar 2009
Retails for: 59p / $0.99

Compatible with: iPod touch Gen 1 & 2 / iPhone Classic / iPhone 3G