New 'licensing service' replacing existing copy protection method in Android Market

Copy protection has always been a concern in the Android Market, primarily because applications can be sideloaded onto phones without a root or other modification from the end user. In a brief announcement made today, Eric Chu has made clear that a new method for protecting the work of paid app creators will be implemented long-term, with the plan being to "replace the current Android Market copy-protection mechanism over the next few months." This new "licensing service" is available now for those that want in, providing developers with a secure mechanism that can ping a Market License Server upon launch in order to see if a particular app was indeed purchased legitimately. It's hard to say how exactly this will affect usability (specifically in offline scenarios), but it's certainly an interesting twist to the whole situation. Expect to hear lots of growling on both sides as more and more apps opt to take advantage.

[Thanks, Jonathan]

[Dan Fruzzetti Posted Jul 28th 2010 3:58PM]

Fine. Stealing apps is hard these days anyway, which is a good deterrent. Except I don't want to pay for those packets if I'm gonna be stuck paying per byte of bandwidth. Today I am unlimited, but I'm not sure that'll be forever, you know?

[Broo Posted Jul 28th 2010 4:09PM]

yea- I am sure adding DRM will help reduce piracy- just like every CD/DVD DRM they have attempted on PCs stopped this over the past 10+ years...

DRM will help stop 'casual' piracy, but there will always be a way to circumvent. In the end, DRM usually just pisses off the honest user that is trying to figure out how to make their purchased application work.

So if there are DRM problems, is Google going to have a help desk for people having issues -or does the burden fall on the cellular companies?

[jeffeulogy Posted Jul 28th 2010 8:17PM]

How hard do you think pirates will work for a 3 dollar app?

[Broo Posted Jul 28th 2010 10:43PM]

@jeffeulogy
One big issue is that many hackers aren't out to make/save money- they just want to do it for 'cred' by being able to hack it.

Several groups have been able to jailbreak each release of the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch iOS- and by changing a loader file on the phone, once can load ANY app on it- .99c an up.

These hacks were done on iOS - which is not open source; how hard do you will it be when everyone has free access the source code and dev kit for every version of Android OS?

I personally don't want to see an update war where Google is releasing a new patch every few weeks to patch a hack (like Sony has done with the PSP for the past 6+ years).

[TomClancy Posted Jul 28th 2010 6:47PM]

What...? What was that...?

Did someone say Settlers 7?

[Pies Posted Jul 30th 2010 10:49AM]

DRM is not an advantage. It's a decision to try to force some people who have no intention of buying your app to either buy it or (more likely) stop using it, at the cost of annoying some of your existing customers when it breaks their experience.

It may well have positive influence on your profits, but it doesn't give you any real competitive advantage. The biggest risk is that it can turn away more customers than it'll force to buy the app.