There was a great post over at Techdirt the other day about an iPhone developer, Chris Baker, who found out that someone was trying to find a cracked version of his app: F***ing Word Of The Day.

Typically when developers find out that their applications have been cracked they tend to get all pissy and start lashing out at anyone associated with doing, or asking for a cracked version but Chris took a really cool, and refreshing approach.

Once he had found out about the request for a crack of his app,  Chris headed to the forum thread where the request had surfaced and wrote the following message to the thread:

Hello! I’m the creator of the ******* Word of the Day website and more particularly the F-ing Word of the Day App. First of all, this is a huge compliment! As a person who pirates content, I’ve always placed the moment people are pirating MY goods as the exact time of my arrival, as it were. So congratu-*******-lations to me. With that said, I’d like to just offer that while I’m employed with a decent salary in the city of New York, I am by no means rich…I write all the sentences myself and find the words to use myself and I do this in my own personal time and essentially for free. Sure, I learn a few words too, but I was already a pretty well-read guy, and could have done without the site.

What’s my point in all this? Go ahead and pirate the app. It cost me 1500 bucks to have programmed. It’s not even a month’s rent for me. But if you think the site is cool, and you want to pay for one eighth of a Stella Artois for me, hook me up with 99 cents. The rapture will be here soon, I could use the drink.

Now in normal developer/cracker/pirate conversations this is a point when either the pirate or cracker gets their back up and the war of words escalates but in this case the person who wanted the crack and who Chris replied to wrote back that if he had a credit card or some other way to pay for the app he would have been more than willing to buy it.

Turns out as well that the person appreciated Chris’ response so much that he took down the request for a crack and would redouble his efforts to find some way to pay for the app, even if it ended up costing more.

This in turn brought Chris back with this comment:

Sir, you’ve warmed the cockles of my heart. I believe Apple allows you to gift apps to people, and I’m feeling charitable so if you want to email me your address or whatever in the hell they require to complete such a transaction, I will buy the app for you. I only ask that you give the ******* thing a good rating.  I hope this comment thread goes down as one of the more unexpected things that happens to you online. I like the unexpected. And I like making people happy, even when something stupid like learning vocabulary is involved.

One of the interesting side effects of this conversation was that people following the thread turned around and started buying Chris’ app – even though, as some as they pointed out, they didn’t have any use for the app.

Too bad more companies didn’t act the same way.

Hey Mr. RIAA, this is how you treat pirates is a post from: The Inquisitr

Excuse my while I <snicker>™ as I write this post but is seems that game maker Ubisoft decided that their own copies of the soundtrack for their new game Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood wasn’t quite up to snuff so they decidedto package up a pirated version and call it their own.

It was a sharp-eyed user over at Reddit who first discovered upon preordering the game that all but one of the songs of the soundtrack had the phrase “encoded by Arsa13″ included in each song’s ID3 tag. It didn’t take much of a search to find out that one of the torrents for the game’s soundtrack is attributed to this Arsa13 person.

Ubisoft isn’t say much at this point about the situation other than they are investigating. Here is a screenshot of the song titles in the soundtrack courtesy of Ars Technica with the comment field included.

Ubisoft sends out pirated soundtrack for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is a post from: The Inquisitr

For those who might not know who Tucker Max is here’s a little background. Tucker is a 34 year old who has fame and fortune by recounting tales of his real-life drunken antics and sexual antics. Out of this he got a book deal in 2006 that saw I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell hit the NY Times Bestseller.

The popularity of the book then landed Tucker a movie deal based on the book that will be hitting theaters tomorrow in a “limited release” and it is the release schedule that has prompted Tucker to tell people living outside of the US and Canada that if they want to see the movie to go right ahead and pirate it.

Other foreign release: Again, we have no control over foreign release at all. None. They can go day and date, they can wait a year, they can just send it straight to DVD, they can do anything they want. That is the way foreign release work, and asking me about when they are coming out is pointless. I don’t know and it’s not up to me. If you live outside the US and are desperate to see the movie and can’t find the release date in your country, then just pirate the movie and watch it online. I am serious. I have no issue with that.

hat tip to Torrent Freaks

Tucker Max says it’s cool by him to pirate his movie is a post from: The Inquisitr

Sarah Perez has a post over on ReadWriteWeb that has been kind of bothering me for most of the day. The way the story goes is this

• woman goes to a party
• woman puts on a pirate hat
• woman has a picture of herself taken drinking while wearing a pirate hat – a toy one at that
• woman posts said picture to her MySpace page with the title Drunken Pirate
• at the same time said woman posts a note alluding to a strained relationship with a supervising teacher
• the University she was attending decides that she shouldn’t get her degree in education
• woman sues
• woman loses
• woman says her First Amendment rights have been violate.

Okay .. got the picture?

Now here’s the problem I am having. Everything I have read so far has been pushing this whole idea that it’s because of some stupid picture on MySpace that ruined her chances at getting her teaching degree. What isn’t being taken into account are the reports of the note regarding her teaching supervisor. I haven’t been able to find out what exactly was said in that note but to discount it as a possible reason – or one of the reasons for her situations is ignoring some possible facts.

As well, of all the articles I read only one made mention of the fact that this woman had already been criticized for her competence and professionalism, not to mention generally bad evaluations. Why couldn’t this have been the reason for her not getting her teaching degree?

It seems to me that in this case social media is being used as a handy scapegoat by both parties in the matter. To say it was just because of some picture is irresponsible. At the very best such a picture might have gotten a reprimand with a lecture on professional conduct – it does not however equal ruining a person’s career.

However having bad evaluations or having your competence questioned is grounds for not getting a degree. To cloud over the whole issue with things like Myspace photos; which was admittedly a stupid thing to do, is ridiculous. It may have provided additional ammunition for the university to not give her an education degree but in of itself I don’t think it was the whole reason.

The fact that this woman then tried to couch it in First Amendment rights though is equally insulting. She did something stupid maybe by posting the picture but it was her actions in the classroom that more than likely saw her with just an English degree instead.

It seems though that once any social media angle surfaces these days it is either the cause or the solution to some problem. Well, as nice as that might be for the press, I greatly doubt that is the case here. Sometimes a duck is just that – a duck. In this case a woman was an incompetent teaching student that didn’t deserve a degree that would let her teach our children.

End of story.

[pic courtesy of The Smoking Gun]

Drunken Pirate or college degree – which do you pick? is a post from: The Inquisitr