It's true that pirates don't often convert to paid customers, but then again, they are just randomly trying apps, because for them its free.

The idea that this person would have been a paying customer is absurd. Even a trial app person only converts to paying at rate of less than 10%...this article says 7% my guess is closer to 2%.

in other words if you could eliminate piracy via copy protection mechanisms that are uhackable, these pirates would certainly be converted into trial customers instead, but they would be only slightly more likely to purchase the app, than they were before.

Because, finally one article got it right, they don't have money to buy the apps, and it cannot be wished from nowhere.

No examination of the actual facts, should be construed as an endorsement of piracy.

Piracy is wrong, and should be eliminated by better copy protection mechanisms, which are getting better every day.

But, there should be no fantasy about it, the reason companies don't spend millions perfecting copy protection, is because they well know it isn't going to cause a boom in sales.

The reason why companies don't perfect copy protection, even though the tech has the promise of being almost 100% effective - it's expensive. Too expensive to be worth the effort, for only marginally better sales.

The reason why they prefer the far less effective method of asking the government to make everything a felony and put teenage mothers in jail -- because its free.

It shifts the costs from their budget, to the public budget. Regardless of how little it helps, its free, to them, and it helps, a little. So they go for it.

As citizens, we should think about defecits, taxes, costs, and what we think is the reasonable answer, and our motivations may be different from apple corporate.

I'm using AntiCrack http://www.drobnik.com/touch/anticrack and have no problems with apps getting pirated! I even gain money out of these illegal copies offering ad-mop to users and transfer many of them back to the App Store buying my app ;-)

Ever think of people who have multiple devices that use the same app? With this new iTunes sharing, or anyone authorizing on more than one computer, or someone who "backs up iTMS purchases" before wiping an iPhone/iTouch can somewhat legitimately store or use their app in more than one place.

Seriously, if you can afford an iPhone and the data plan, money is not an issue for you to buy most apps which are in the .99-4.99 price range. To put that in perspective, that is less than the price of a typical McDonald's value meal.

Money is not a barrier in any country for people with enough money to acquire an iPhone. The barrier is amorality and a belief (caused by open source) that software has no value. These pirated apps are out there in the jailbreaking community and some people with no sense of right and wrong or those who think that just because some software is offered for free that all software has no monetary value.

Open source software is offered free by choice of the authors but that does not mean that the cost of developing software is free in terms of money or the monetary value of time spent. Other people choose to charge money for their software and that is their "right" as copyright holders to dictate the terms of distribution.

Um, aristotles, you do realize that the iPod touch also comes into play here, and probably makes for a far larger base of iPhone OS devices than the iPhone.

I guess aristotles has already said it, but it has to be pointed out that the correlation to poverty within the countries with the highest piracy rates is just a made up "factoid." It could be for any number of reasons and just picking one out of thin air like that is poor analysis at best. to say that the countries with high piracy rates are impoverished is just an observation, there is no reason (at least no reason given), to link it to the piracy. All of these countries are going to have things in common that other countries with low piracy rates might not have, the simple correlation doesn't imply causality in any way.

If one was going to make an assumption in the first place, it would make mores sense to stay within the scope of the issues being discussed (breaking the law), and pin the discrepancy to the legal systems of the countries involved and their efforts to stamp out piracy. Again, as aristotles implies above, the countries in question are very well known to be "hotspots" of corruption, illegality, and immoral and generally selfish behaviour to one's fellow citizens. Places where the "social contract" and the belief in the law and government is generally as weak as it can be.