The piracy number feels particularly "stupid". I'd like to assume that simply because a phone is jailbroken doesn't make them count the running app as "pirated". I'd HOPE that they found someway to uniquely identify each phone ofr analytics purposes without violating privacy... I'm highly doubtful at this poit.
~ CB
Exactly my phone is jailbroken and I pay for apps. Why? Because they are, for the most part, really cheap AND really useful. Plus my guess is that no more then 10% of the Phones are jailbroken if that. Average consumer has no idea how to do that. This is bad data.
due to various banking and legal issues, itunes cards don't work across borders. ie I can't buy a card in the US and use it in the UK, Canadian etc store. Even if the store is in 'dollars' because it is not the same as US Dollars.
and in some countries, they don't allow the kind of prepaid system that the itunes cards run.
that's what the complaint was about.
Thanks for clearing that up for me. I was not considering it from the "cross border use of cards" angle.
The quoted 75% piracy rate doesn't have a lot of documented support. This sounds like RIAA claiming billions in piracy, based solely on specious statistics. Does anyone have solid data?
It's also not "lost" revenue since one could probably safely assume the people stealing software probably never would have paid for it in the first place. I know couple guys like that, steal it wherever they can but if it wasn't available through piracy sites they'd still never pay for it.
Don't get me wrong though, I think the piracy is ridiculous & anyone who pays legitimately should be upset at it. When people steal software from companies it's usually the legitimate users that suffer when companies start locking things down or raising fees to cover "losses". Hackers just find more ways around the security measures so they don't really loose anything.
I typically tell those that I know who do hack their iphones to steal software they ought to pay me for any additional costs I incur. After all when the carrier passes the pain along to me through rate hikes or service restrictions it is really only in response to their irresponsibility.
I don't see how this conclusion can be made. Are you saying that if there was no piracy, then his sales would be identical? If you are are, then it can be taken in the opposite direction - if software isn't available to be pirated, then those who pirate would own no software? Of course they would, only they'd have to buy it.
That is what he is saying. The number of pirated copies bears no firm relationship to sales.
The "opposite" you mention is not an opposite at all - it is a hypothetical about a world which does not exist.
It's easy to use your argument and say he didn't lose any, he just failed to earn it, but look where the result is - he no no longer develops.
Yeah. If not for this damn piracy, I would develop an iPhone app that would earn me a million bucks. But because of this damn piracy, I'm not doing it. So because of those pirates, I have lost $1,000,000.00.
While it may sound nicer to call it "copyright infringement" rather than "stealing" .... it may even be more technically correct... but when a person's actions (piracy) causes someone else to lose future income that is, IMHO, stealing , pure and simple. Just because a person doesn't reach into my pocket and take $$$$ out.... does not mean they haven't cheated/stolen from me.
PS .. I'm not blaming anyone specifically ... just saying .... piracy=stealing.
But you glibly assume that "(piracy) causes someone else to lose future income ". The entire point is that income and incidents of piracy have no relationship. One does not preclude the other.
You need to examine your premises if you want a reliable conclusion.
A lost sale is lost income no matter what the reason. If I was going to buy something but instead "acquired" it for free via piracy .... that is lost income and to argue against that premise is only done to justify stealing .... IMHO.
The entire point is that piracy may or may not lead to a "lost sale". By some estimates, pirates are unlikely to have purchased.
That is why movie theaters do not have a "lost sale" every time somebody flips on the TV set.
1) The rate of piracy, as noted in the article itself, was estimated to be 75%, not 90%.
2) A real developer has commented with figures of 87%.
3) I rounded this to 90%, for ease of maths when doing the sums for example purposes.
Why do you find this doubtful? If you have other information you would like to share, we'd all love to see it. Wired have had an article which states a potential 100:1 piracy : pay ratio, as taken from analytical stats, rather than guesswork.
I'm not the only one who thinks these numbers aren't "grounded in reality"... but anecdotally, I just don't know anyone who jailbreaks let alone pirates apps. Maybe I'm sheltered, but how is it worth the trouble of hacking your phone/ ipod and then hunting down and install "cracked" versions of software typically available for under $5? Sounds like huge waste of time. Even for Tom Tom (or others of that price point) sounds like the devs can lock you out at any time should they choose to.
"Even though Gotow limits launches of a cracked copy to five times in a single week before it locks down, that average supports the idea that the pirate community downloads a high number of applications but rarely uses them."
"Still, some developers have managed to convert their pirate friends into paid users by turning the cracked versions into trial versions of an app, which seems like a user-positive approach to dealing with the piracy problem."
But you glibly assume that "(piracy) causes someone else to lose future income ". The entire point is that income and incidents of piracy have no relationship. One does not preclude the other.
You need to examine your premises if you want a reliable conclusion.
I think it would be wrong for me to assume that everyone who pirates off of the web would have bought that product if it was unable to be pirated .... it would be equally wrong to assume that none of the pirated product would have been purchased legally in place of pirating it.
While we don't have a way of knowing what percentage of lost purchases is due to the ability to pirate only someone who refuses to see what is directly in front of them would "glibly" state: "The entire point is that income and incidents of piracy have no relationship". It may be a large amount or it may be a small amount, but it defies logic to think there isn't any. Surely you and I could agree on that.
I think it would be wrong for me to assume that everyone who pirates off of the web would have bought that product if it was unable to be pirated .... it would be equally wrong to assume that none of the pirated product would have been purchased legally in place of pirating it.
While we don't have a way of knowing what percentage of lost purchases is due to the ability to pirate only someone who refuses to see what is directly in front of them would "glibly" state: "The entire point is that income and incidents of piracy have no relationship". It may be a large amount or it may be a small amount, but it defies logic to think there isn't any. Surely you and I could agree on that.
Sure. My point is that there is no definite relationship between illegal copies and lost sales. There are a zillion variables.
I think though, that any comparison to an unrealistic situation, one in which piracy is impossible, is bound to yield unrealistic conclusions.
Some, but not all ... so does that mean that it is not grand theft, just a little theft?
That's not the point, even though it may be true.
The point is that there is no necessary relationship between an illegal copy and a lost future sale. Your point may be the truth, but it is not something that can be reliably tracked.
The original article could have just as well have concluded that "If 10% of the pirates were not pirates, we would have made a boatload of money". Sure.
I think the worst offender in the article is the 75% piracy rate for EVERY app that's sold, which is obviously not true. There are your typical top 100 popular apps that might come close to that, and the rest would be far lower if at all.
Yes. The 75% assumption is what makes the bottom line seem impressive, but the number is both unsupported and highly questionable.
Nothing is missing, there is no deduction of anything (product or money) from the company's assets. Because nothing is missing, it's not even a lost "potential" sale, because the product still exists exactly where it was to still be sold to anyone who is/was willing to pay for it.
Besides that, people who are unwilling to pay for your product are not even potential customers. People who are willing to pay for a given product will do so, people who are not, won't. Some people may be willing to take something for free, that doesn't mean they would have paid for it otherwise. If they were willing to pay for it, they would have. The very fact that they DIDN't pay for it is the evidence that they were not willing to pay.
Nothing is missing, there is no deduction of anything (product or money) from the company's assets. Because nothing is missing, it's not even a lost "potential" sale, because the product still exists exactly where it was to still be sold to anyone who is/was willing to pay for it.
Besides that, people who are unwilling to pay for your product are not even potential customers. People who are willing to pay for a given product will do so, people who are not, won't. Some people may be willing to take something for free, that doesn't mean they would have paid for it otherwise. If they were willing to pay for it, they would have. The very fact that they DIDN't pay for it is the evidence that they were not willing to pay.
This is a classic case of someone trying to ease their conscience and justify stealing by only seeing what they want to see. Let me give you a real life example why your opinion is full of holes.
I have several friends who, at one time, before iTunes, would download their music collection from Napster and other music download sites, not because it was free, although that didn't hurt, but because they could choose single songs and not have to take an LP with 3 songs they wanted and 9 songs they did not, and also because they could find tracks that were not in stores anymore.
In every case, since iTunes was created, they have all stopped free downloading and have even started to replace the free music with paid for iTunes tracks. The reasons for doing so differs with each of them .... some, just to "free" their conscience, some because the "quality" was better. I'm not sure if all of their music collections has been "legalized" or not, but I do know that at least one of them has.
The point is, if iTunes had not come along and made it easy and cost efficient to select only the music they wanted .... they all would probably be still downloading "free" music and all of those Pirated tracks would have been a "lost sale". It may free one's mind to think otherwise, thus allowing one to continue pirating, but to actually try to "pretend" that piracy is not stealing because the original item still exists in it's original location defies all logic. The fact that you can't see that does not make it true no matter how much you want it to be.
I hate they way that "jailbreaking" is automatically associated with piracy.
My primary reason for jailbreaking was to add customizations to my phone to make it look the way that I want it to look. I don't understand why I can't "theme" my phone the way I want, especially since it's such a personal device. Since Apple refuses to let people use their mobile device the way people want to, jailbreaking has become a lot more attractive for tweak and theme geeks like me.
Here; let me list a bunch of specific apps and reasons that I jailbroke my iPhone:
Winterboard - This allows me to customize the look and feel of my iPhone, and is MOST people's #1 reason for jailbreaking.
My3G - Let's you use "wi-fi only" apps on 3G-- This comes in VERY handy at times.
Flashlight App that can use FULL brightness. Apple doesn't allow official apps to adjust the brightness, it's limited to the system-wide brightness setting. I keep my iPhone at a very low brightness most of the time but when I want to use the screen as a "flashlight", I don't want to fiddle around with settings just to see in the dark for a few seconds.
SBSettings - The ability to change many, many, settings with a single swipe and tap, no digging around the settings menu and also the ability to toggle sometimes-annoying settings like auto-rotation - which is always on by default (texting, browsing, etc., while lying down is much better with no rotation enabled) - in a snap.
Adblock - There's currently no way to block ads in mobile Safari. I find this annoying and love the fact that I can block ads, just like I do in Firefox on my desktop.
Terminal - If I want to dig down into the guts of my mobile OS, why shouldn't I? Also, I don't like the fact that everyone's default SSH password is 'alpine'. I feel much safer changing it from the default.
Backgrounder - Multitasking! If I want to listen to Pandora radio while I use Twitterific, why shouldn't I be able to? The 3GS is perfectly capable of multitasking because of the RAM cap enforced by Apple. I should be allowed to "suffer" from a performance hit and impact my battery life, if I want to.
Lockdown - Being able to lock specific apps should have been something that Apple built into the iPhone form the very beginning. If someone steals my phone before it locks, they can easily just access all my information. Lockdown lets me add a bit of additional security at a more granular level.
Orbit or Overboard - "Exposé for iPhone, 'nuff said.
5 icon rows/dock - Access more apps from less pages. Being able to have more of my most used apps on my home screen is very convenient.
QuickReply SMS- Allows you to View and Reply to SMS message without having to exit the app your in. Why this functionality isn't built-in to an iPhone, I'll never understand but it's one of the things a constant text-addict needs!
I've got about 180 apps installed. Most of them are from the AppStore, a good 100 or so of those apps are legit paid apps, a bunch of them are also paid apps from Rock and Cydia. The rest are freeware. I don't see the point of pirating AppStore apps, as I enjoy getting constant updates. The apps bought from the Cydia and Rock help support the developers. I've never "bricked" my iPhone or iPod Touch... and that's just FUD these days, as blackra1n can even "unbrick" those phones that've used other jb'ing methods.
All in all, I feel I'm getting my money's worth from my devices by jailbreaking. It lets me do things that I only wished I could. Since Apple is such a control freak about a device I paid for, the only way around that frustration, imho, is to "break the rules". Yeah, it voids the warranty, but a simple factory reset if I ever need to take it in for warranty purposes negates even that issue.
Bottom line is, there's many, many reasons to jailbreak your iPhone but piracy isn't one of mine. There's also more reasons to jailbreak your iPhone, than there is to not jailbreak it. And now since Geohot's blackra1n, it's easier than it's ever been. I wouldn't recommend it to just any newb though, as with any type of thing, there can be some minor security concerns.
I seriously doubt that most people with jailbroken iPods/iPhones are pirating apps. Even if they did, a lot of people who do dip into piracy, end up buying the real app. Take BeeJiveIM (the best messenger app on a mobile platform, loved it on Blackberry too!) for instance, there's a handful of reviews that state they had pirated the app but decided to buy it because they liked it so much. Not every app has a "lite" or free version. With the exception of a few rare apps, there's so many copycats apps in the AppStore, surely, you can find an app with the features you want for $0.99 or even free, just take a look at the Craigslist apps, as an example. There's a surprising selection of ad-supported twins of their paid apps (ie, Twitterific & Twitterific Premium). Even in this failing economy, the AppStore is booming.
I'd even argue that there's a respectable percentage of people who bought iPod Touches and iPhones because of the fact that it can be jailbroken. Once I saw what was possible because of jailbreaking, I said goodbye to my Blackberry and bought an iPhone, with the intent from the get-go to jailbreak it. A lot of people in the jailbreaking community say they'd have never bought an iPod Touch/iPhone if they couldn't jailbreak it. So to some degree, it's driven sales for the hardware.
Comments
The piracy number feels particularly "stupid". I'd like to assume that simply because a phone is jailbroken doesn't make them count the running app as "pirated". I'd HOPE that they found someway to uniquely identify each phone ofr analytics purposes without violating privacy... I'm highly doubtful at this poit.
~ CB
Exactly my phone is jailbroken and I pay for apps. Why? Because they are, for the most part, really cheap AND really useful. Plus my guess is that no more then 10% of the Phones are jailbroken if that. Average consumer has no idea how to do that. This is bad data.
due to various banking and legal issues, itunes cards don't work across borders. ie I can't buy a card in the US and use it in the UK, Canadian etc store. Even if the store is in 'dollars' because it is not the same as US Dollars.
and in some countries, they don't allow the kind of prepaid system that the itunes cards run.
that's what the complaint was about.
Thanks for clearing that up for me. I was not considering it from the "cross border use of cards" angle.
The quoted 75% piracy rate doesn't have a lot of documented support. This sounds like RIAA claiming billions in piracy, based solely on specious statistics. Does anyone have solid data?
It's also not "lost" revenue since one could probably safely assume the people stealing software probably never would have paid for it in the first place. I know couple guys like that, steal it wherever they can but if it wasn't available through piracy sites they'd still never pay for it.
Don't get me wrong though, I think the piracy is ridiculous & anyone who pays legitimately should be upset at it. When people steal software from companies it's usually the legitimate users that suffer when companies start locking things down or raising fees to cover "losses". Hackers just find more ways around the security measures so they don't really loose anything.
I typically tell those that I know who do hack their iphones to steal software they ought to pay me for any additional costs I incur. After all when the carrier passes the pain along to me through rate hikes or service restrictions it is really only in response to their irresponsibility.
I don't see how this conclusion can be made. Are you saying that if there was no piracy, then his sales would be identical? If you are are, then it can be taken in the opposite direction - if software isn't available to be pirated, then those who pirate would own no software? Of course they would, only they'd have to buy it.
That is what he is saying. The number of pirated copies bears no firm relationship to sales.
The "opposite" you mention is not an opposite at all - it is a hypothetical about a world which does not exist.
It's easy to use your argument and say he didn't lose any, he just failed to earn it, but look where the result is - he no no longer develops.
Yeah. If not for this damn piracy, I would develop an iPhone app that would earn me a million bucks. But because of this damn piracy, I'm not doing it. So because of those pirates, I have lost $1,000,000.00.
They should be hung.
While it may sound nicer to call it "copyright infringement" rather than "stealing" .... it may even be more technically correct... but when a person's actions (piracy) causes someone else to lose future income that is, IMHO, stealing , pure and simple. Just because a person doesn't reach into my pocket and take $$$$ out.... does not mean they haven't cheated/stolen from me.
PS .. I'm not blaming anyone specifically ... just saying .... piracy=stealing.
But you glibly assume that "(piracy) causes someone else to lose future income ". The entire point is that income and incidents of piracy have no relationship. One does not preclude the other.
You need to examine your premises if you want a reliable conclusion.
A lost sale is lost income no matter what the reason. If I was going to buy something but instead "acquired" it for free via piracy .... that is lost income and to argue against that premise is only done to justify stealing .... IMHO.
The entire point is that piracy may or may not lead to a "lost sale". By some estimates, pirates are unlikely to have purchased.
That is why movie theaters do not have a "lost sale" every time somebody flips on the TV set.
1) The rate of piracy, as noted in the article itself, was estimated to be 75%, not 90%.
2) A real developer has commented with figures of 87%.
3) I rounded this to 90%, for ease of maths when doing the sums for example purposes.
Why do you find this doubtful? If you have other information you would like to share, we'd all love to see it. Wired have had an article which states a potential 100:1 piracy : pay ratio, as taken from analytical stats, rather than guesswork.
I'm not the only one who thinks these numbers aren't "grounded in reality"... but anecdotally, I just don't know anyone who jailbreaks let alone pirates apps. Maybe I'm sheltered, but how is it worth the trouble of hacking your phone/ ipod and then hunting down and install "cracked" versions of software typically available for under $5? Sounds like huge waste of time. Even for Tom Tom (or others of that price point) sounds like the devs can lock you out at any time should they choose to.
"Even though Gotow limits launches of a cracked copy to five times in a single week before it locks down, that average supports the idea that the pirate community downloads a high number of applications but rarely uses them."
"Still, some developers have managed to convert their pirate friends into paid users by turning the cracked versions into trial versions of an app, which seems like a user-positive approach to dealing with the piracy problem."
I agree with the last line the most.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/20...in-reality.ars
But you glibly assume that "(piracy) causes someone else to lose future income ". The entire point is that income and incidents of piracy have no relationship. One does not preclude the other.
You need to examine your premises if you want a reliable conclusion.
I think it would be wrong for me to assume that everyone who pirates off of the web would have bought that product if it was unable to be pirated .... it would be equally wrong to assume that none of the pirated product would have been purchased legally in place of pirating it.
While we don't have a way of knowing what percentage of lost purchases is due to the ability to pirate only someone who refuses to see what is directly in front of them would "glibly" state: "The entire point is that income and incidents of piracy have no relationship". It may be a large amount or it may be a small amount, but it defies logic to think there isn't any. Surely you and I could agree on that.
The entire point is that piracy may or may not lead to a "lost sale". By some estimates, pirates are unlikely to have purchased.
Some, but not all ... so does that mean that it is not grand theft, just a little theft?
That is why movie theaters do not have a "lost sale" every time somebody flips on the TV set.
Movie studios get paid from TV stations to broadcast their movies.
I think it would be wrong for me to assume that everyone who pirates off of the web would have bought that product if it was unable to be pirated .... it would be equally wrong to assume that none of the pirated product would have been purchased legally in place of pirating it.
While we don't have a way of knowing what percentage of lost purchases is due to the ability to pirate only someone who refuses to see what is directly in front of them would "glibly" state: "The entire point is that income and incidents of piracy have no relationship". It may be a large amount or it may be a small amount, but it defies logic to think there isn't any. Surely you and I could agree on that.
Sure. My point is that there is no definite relationship between illegal copies and lost sales. There are a zillion variables.
I think though, that any comparison to an unrealistic situation, one in which piracy is impossible, is bound to yield unrealistic conclusions.
Some, but not all ... so does that mean that it is not grand theft, just a little theft?
That's not the point, even though it may be true.
The point is that there is no necessary relationship between an illegal copy and a lost future sale. Your point may be the truth, but it is not something that can be reliably tracked.
The original article could have just as well have concluded that "If 10% of the pirates were not pirates, we would have made a boatload of money". Sure.
I think the worst offender in the article is the 75% piracy rate for EVERY app that's sold, which is obviously not true. There are your typical top 100 popular apps that might come close to that, and the rest would be far lower if at all.
Yes. The 75% assumption is what makes the bottom line seem impressive, but the number is both unsupported and highly questionable.
Could you expand on that please?
It's simple.
There is no such thing as a loss due to piracy.
Nothing is missing, there is no deduction of anything (product or money) from the company's assets. Because nothing is missing, it's not even a lost "potential" sale, because the product still exists exactly where it was to still be sold to anyone who is/was willing to pay for it.
Besides that, people who are unwilling to pay for your product are not even potential customers. People who are willing to pay for a given product will do so, people who are not, won't. Some people may be willing to take something for free, that doesn't mean they would have paid for it otherwise. If they were willing to pay for it, they would have. The very fact that they DIDN't pay for it is the evidence that they were not willing to pay.
It's simple.
There is no such thing as a loss due to piracy.
Nothing is missing, there is no deduction of anything (product or money) from the company's assets. Because nothing is missing, it's not even a lost "potential" sale, because the product still exists exactly where it was to still be sold to anyone who is/was willing to pay for it.
Besides that, people who are unwilling to pay for your product are not even potential customers. People who are willing to pay for a given product will do so, people who are not, won't. Some people may be willing to take something for free, that doesn't mean they would have paid for it otherwise. If they were willing to pay for it, they would have. The very fact that they DIDN't pay for it is the evidence that they were not willing to pay.
This is a classic case of someone trying to ease their conscience and justify stealing by only seeing what they want to see. Let me give you a real life example why your opinion is full of holes.
I have several friends who, at one time, before iTunes, would download their music collection from Napster and other music download sites, not because it was free, although that didn't hurt, but because they could choose single songs and not have to take an LP with 3 songs they wanted and 9 songs they did not, and also because they could find tracks that were not in stores anymore.
In every case, since iTunes was created, they have all stopped free downloading and have even started to replace the free music with paid for iTunes tracks. The reasons for doing so differs with each of them .... some, just to "free" their conscience, some because the "quality" was better. I'm not sure if all of their music collections has been "legalized" or not, but I do know that at least one of them has.
The point is, if iTunes had not come along and made it easy and cost efficient to select only the music they wanted .... they all would probably be still downloading "free" music and all of those Pirated tracks would have been a "lost sale". It may free one's mind to think otherwise, thus allowing one to continue pirating, but to actually try to "pretend" that piracy is not stealing because the original item still exists in it's original location defies all logic. The fact that you can't see that does not make it true no matter how much you want it to be.
My primary reason for jailbreaking was to add customizations to my phone to make it look the way that I want it to look. I don't understand why I can't "theme" my phone the way I want, especially since it's such a personal device. Since Apple refuses to let people use their mobile device the way people want to, jailbreaking has become a lot more attractive for tweak and theme geeks like me.
Here; let me list a bunch of specific apps and reasons that I jailbroke my iPhone:
- Winterboard - This allows me to customize the look and feel of my iPhone, and is MOST people's #1 reason for jailbreaking.
- My3G - Let's you use "wi-fi only" apps on 3G-- This comes in VERY handy at times.
- Flashlight App that can use FULL brightness. Apple doesn't allow official apps to adjust the brightness, it's limited to the system-wide brightness setting. I keep my iPhone at a very low brightness most of the time but when I want to use the screen as a "flashlight", I don't want to fiddle around with settings just to see in the dark for a few seconds.
- SBSettings - The ability to change many, many, settings with a single swipe and tap, no digging around the settings menu and also the ability to toggle sometimes-annoying settings like auto-rotation - which is always on by default (texting, browsing, etc., while lying down is much better with no rotation enabled) - in a snap.
- Adblock - There's currently no way to block ads in mobile Safari. I find this annoying and love the fact that I can block ads, just like I do in Firefox on my desktop.
- Terminal - If I want to dig down into the guts of my mobile OS, why shouldn't I? Also, I don't like the fact that everyone's default SSH password is 'alpine'. I feel much safer changing it from the default.
- Backgrounder - Multitasking! If I want to listen to Pandora radio while I use Twitterific, why shouldn't I be able to? The 3GS is perfectly capable of multitasking because of the RAM cap enforced by Apple. I should be allowed to "suffer" from a performance hit and impact my battery life, if I want to.
- Lockdown - Being able to lock specific apps should have been something that Apple built into the iPhone form the very beginning. If someone steals my phone before it locks, they can easily just access all my information. Lockdown lets me add a bit of additional security at a more granular level.
- Orbit or Overboard - "Exposé for iPhone, 'nuff said.
- 5 icon rows/dock - Access more apps from less pages. Being able to have more of my most used apps on my home screen is very convenient.
- QuickReply SMS- Allows you to View and Reply to SMS message without having to exit the app your in. Why this functionality isn't built-in to an iPhone, I'll never understand but it's one of the things a constant text-addict needs!
I've got about 180 apps installed. Most of them are from the AppStore, a good 100 or so of those apps are legit paid apps, a bunch of them are also paid apps from Rock and Cydia. The rest are freeware. I don't see the point of pirating AppStore apps, as I enjoy getting constant updates. The apps bought from the Cydia and Rock help support the developers. I've never "bricked" my iPhone or iPod Touch... and that's just FUD these days, as blackra1n can even "unbrick" those phones that've used other jb'ing methods.All in all, I feel I'm getting my money's worth from my devices by jailbreaking. It lets me do things that I only wished I could. Since Apple is such a control freak about a device I paid for, the only way around that frustration, imho, is to "break the rules". Yeah, it voids the warranty, but a simple factory reset if I ever need to take it in for warranty purposes negates even that issue.
Bottom line is, there's many, many reasons to jailbreak your iPhone but piracy isn't one of mine. There's also more reasons to jailbreak your iPhone, than there is to not jailbreak it. And now since Geohot's blackra1n, it's easier than it's ever been. I wouldn't recommend it to just any newb though, as with any type of thing, there can be some minor security concerns.
I seriously doubt that most people with jailbroken iPods/iPhones are pirating apps. Even if they did, a lot of people who do dip into piracy, end up buying the real app. Take BeeJiveIM (the best messenger app on a mobile platform, loved it on Blackberry too!) for instance, there's a handful of reviews that state they had pirated the app but decided to buy it because they liked it so much. Not every app has a "lite" or free version. With the exception of a few rare apps, there's so many copycats apps in the AppStore, surely, you can find an app with the features you want for $0.99 or even free, just take a look at the Craigslist apps, as an example. There's a surprising selection of ad-supported twins of their paid apps (ie, Twitterific & Twitterific Premium). Even in this failing economy, the AppStore is booming.
I'd even argue that there's a respectable percentage of people who bought iPod Touches and iPhones because of the fact that it can be jailbroken. Once I saw what was possible because of jailbreaking, I said goodbye to my Blackberry and bought an iPhone, with the intent from the get-go to jailbreak it. A lot of people in the jailbreaking community say they'd have never bought an iPod Touch/iPhone if they couldn't jailbreak it. So to some degree, it's driven sales for the hardware.
Geez, didn't expect my post to end up this long!