Android Apps to Talk to Servers to Guard Against Piracy

Piracy concerns and DRM protection are big components of mobile, digital software sales and companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft must work hard not only to court developers to their mobile platforms, but to ease them into knowing that their work is safe and protected from looting pirates. Google, with its Android Market applications storefront, will be changing the way app licensing work to make it a safer playground for developers and hopefully keep things as pain-free and simple for consumers in the process.

Under the new plan, apps will ping and talk with Android Market servers upon launch to ensure that the true, authentic copy is being opened. Developers on other platforms, such as iOS, have used similar measure in addition to Apple’s iTunes DRM and licensing practices to safeguard against pirated apps, which can be loaded after some tweaks and jailbreaking the iPhone. Instead of talking directly with the App Store, iOS developers have their apps communicate with their own company’s servers.

Hopefully, as we see more safeguards to relax developers on Android, we’ll begin to see a larger catalog of apps that are higher in quality. Although Android’s app library is growing, a common criticism is that the quality of apps is still lacking; for the good apps on Android out there, those apps are still hampered by ads so hopefully with a better license policy, developers can be confident that they will get paid.

Casey Pham
Categories: Cellphones