Installous

Pirates download wrong Installous from the App Store, then complain about it

Installous, the pirate app store that allowed those so inclined to download iOS apps for free may already be long gone, but that hasn’t stopped plenty of people downloading it from the App Store. Or at least, they thought they had.

See, there’s a new Installous in town, and it’s by a developer called Larisa Flora. It’s not the Installous you’re thinking of though – this one’s a game which involves gears and colors, apparently.

What it’s not, is a way of ripping off developers. And people are not happy at all…

Hackulous shuts down: piracy app Installous is gone

In what seems like a small victory against app piracy, the Hackulous team announced today on its site that it is shutting down, bringing down its most popular apps in the process: Installous and AppSync.

Although it’s still unclear what the reasons behind the shut down are, Hackulous claims on its website that it’s mostly due to stagnant forums and the difficulty to moderate them. Although I never hang out in the forums, I find it hard to believe that there was little activity in there, especially given the notoriety of Hackulous in the piracy world…

Ask Jeff: Episode 03

In this week’s episode of Ask Jeff, I tackle a whole host of interesting questions. This episode dwells more on the personal behind-the-scenes side of things, so I hope you folks enjoy.

Questions answered include: My opinions on pirated repos & Installous, the iPhone 5’s 4G LTE potential, and the type of cameras I use for filming our videos.

I believe I’ve hit a record by personally answering 10 different questions from our readers, so tune in to see if your question was among those answered…

Dissident and i0n1c on Banning Pirated Apps in iOS 5 Jailbreak

Stefan Esser, better known as “i0n1c,” has been receiving a lot of heat from the jailbreak community as of late. Stefan is a prominent member of the jailbreak developer scene, and he was responsible for the untethered exploit that has been used for the iOS 4.3 jailbreak.

i0n1c recently introduced the idea of banning pirated apps in the iOS 5 jailbreak. He stated that if he were to release the jailbreak for iOS 5, he would consider placing a restriction on installing apps from the infamous ‘Installous’ repo. Millions of jailbreakers use Installous to download pirated apps.

Hackulous, the group behind Installous, obviously feels very differently about i0n1c’s notion. The frontman for Hackulous, known as Dissident, has also shared his thoughts on the issue of banning cracked apps through a jailbreak.

The State of App Piracy and What Can Be Done to Fix It

[iDB does not condone app piracy.]
Have you ever been inside a peddler’s mall? It’s basically a huge consignment shop where different vendors come and sell their knick knacks under one roof.

People who have items to sell in a peddler’s mall pay the mall’s owner a percentage of their sales for the rights to sell in the store. People will come to the peddler’s mall to see what kind of deals they can find and to barter with the sellers.

In a way, the peddler’s mall is a lot like the App Store. And folks, people are shoplifting.

Installous Gets A Major Update

Infamous jailbreak application Installous just had a major update and now looks better than it ever did. For those of you who don’t know, Installous is an application that lets you download cracked apps on your iPhone. In short, it’s like the App Store for cracked apps.

I have to admit that the app has been beautifully designed. It looks great and seems to work as advertised. This being said, we at iDB strongly disapprove of anything related to pirating apps…

Install0us Is Dead

Those of you that are into downloading cracked applications (I know you’re there) will be saddened to learn that Installous, the infamous installer app for cracked applications, is shutting down. Others will rejoice and see this as a victory, especially for developers.

puy0, the creator of Installous wrote a very naive posts about the reasons why he’s giving up. He basically explains he didn’t know what he was doing was illegal.
During all this time I have been actively searching for a lawyer to know how legal we were. Not the lawyer you can find just anywhere, but one that understands Internet legislations and specializes in copyright laws. Trust me, these people are rare, very in demand, and very expensive.

As such I have been looking for three months, and I finally found one recently. Unfortunately our discussion left me sad and even feeling stupid to have invested so much effort into this, and involved people with me… You see, after talking for more than an hour with him, I’m sorry but the conclusion is that what we do would be very hard to defend against in court.

I am at the moment already at risk, and would risk even more with the exposure that an Install0us v3 release will definitely bring me. Call me a coward, but as I said, hiding under covers is not a life for me. Moreover, these days in my country piracy is a hot subject among politicians… I do not want to be flamed in a trial for something that I do as a hobby, and I do not want to involve any people with me in this. I am sincerely sorry to the people who followed me thinking we were legit, my honest mistake.
This guy is either thinking we are dumbasses or he is very naive. Either way, and whatever your opinion about cracked applications might be, one has to admit that what puy0 did was big. I mean, he had a good 2-year run. In some ways, you can compare him to the creator of Napster. It sure was completely illegal, but it was the first of its kind.

What’s your opinion on this?