this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2023

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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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Remember guys, this is why we don't pay for the apps. (i.imgur.com)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This is the app called Franco Kernel Manager, one of the best kernel managers that are out there... Even when it was outdated (which I think that's the cause it got booted from the PlayStore?).

I used it to check the process of my phone and monitor the active and idle drain mostly, I paid for it a long time ago, but now it just fails to check the licence and it doesn't let me use it fully... I think there must be a cracked APK over there...

EDIT:

Fortunately the app is back in the store and hopefully that update version comes soon enough!

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[–] [email protected] 513 points 2 years ago (9 children)

There are lots of reasons to pirate stuff, but this argument in particular boils down to "We should steal stuff now because maybe some day in the future I won't be able to use the paid version after they go out of business." And that is shitty.

You bought it, so go crack it now that the license check is broken and nobody will care. That's GOOD piracy. Support the creators, pirate when you can't or it's unreasonable to pay (more).

Don't just pirate to mitigate theoretical future inconvenience. Do it to circumvent actual inconvenience, or to get things you couldn't otherwise afford, or to say "fuck you" to big, shitty companies.

But pirating from a small-time dev just in case there are maybe license problems far in the future is not The Way

[–] [email protected] 53 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Couldn't agree more on it being a bad justification for piracy

Though if you bought it and the license check stops working later I'm not even sure I'd call patching it to work without the check piracy, it's simply fixing something you own

Yeah you're going to use the same tools but to me I don't see it as piracy but simply a right to repair thing

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Yeah, exactly. It's the same reason I have little hesitance pirating a game I already have when the platform I have it on doesn't support mods (looking at you, Xbox game pass)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

In this regard it's about the ability to pirate, which always comes down to the classic "it's a service issue."

The need for pirating this software wouldn't exist if the license check wasn't broken, but since it is, it's now the only way to access it regardless of your ownership or not.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

Back in the day I would often "pirate" games I owned on a CD because ot was faster than finding said CD.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Or when I lived in a place with shit internet and I had games that needed an online handshake to play, I basically pirated every game that needed that check because I wouldn't be able to play otherwise

And they usually ran better too, funny that

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 years ago (1 children)

okay but if that's your purpose then there's no problem with purchasing and pirating at the same time.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Absolutely. I do that regularly. Purchase to support the creators, pirate to meet some specific use case.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (3 children)

like I've had more than one super good YouTube video essay go missing, getting permanently pulled because of some copyright issue with a background shot or something, so I'll actually add really good YouTube videos to my Plex library just in case as well

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Totally. Though, that case can be a tiny bit tricky. Like, people should be allowed to remove stuff from the Internet that they've created if they want, but it should also be okay to archive content that may be abandoned or lost. Hard to create rules that differentiate the two effectively for enforcement

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

the specific ones I'm talking about, they were removed by YouTube and not at the creators behest. like one of them is about the three stooges and whoever owns The Three stooges material complained about some copyrighted material in the background horse shit

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Like, people should be allowed to remove stuff from the Internet that they've created if they want,

No, no they shouldn't. This is antithetical to the generally good intention behind copyright.

The point was not to allow people to take away things they have created, but to permit them to profit in order that they might choose to make more, and be able to support their life in a capitalist system. These intentions are largely good.

Allowing people to take away what they have created is the opposite of this intent, and harmful to the public good, which benefits from as many works as possible being accessible to the public.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

You misunderstand my meaning: they shouldn't be able to go out and remove all copies of something in existence. But they should be able to limit distribution of the thing they created, up to and including stopping distribution.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think if more people took that path, pirate only when you actually have a problem, much less content would be cracked and piratable.

Imagine OP and someone who is capable of cracking a software both bought and used this app, then 3 years later the app stops working. OP goes to look for a crack, but one doesn’t exist because the person who would have made it happened to stop using it before they had a need to crack it. So now OP is just boned.

So I say, always pirate everything and do so asap. And then obviously, if you want things to keep being produced, you should probably support the creators.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

"I'm going to steal stuff because if I don't then people who NEED to steal it won't be able to" is some serious mental gymnastics.

Your argument only works for creating cracks, not consuming them. Absolutely create cracks even when they aren't needed. But that's not the same as using the crack even when you don't need to, just because you can

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

Idk if you meant to, but you came across really rude. Anyway…

You’ve got a point about creating but not using the cracks, that does leave the question of when it’s ethical to release it. Immediately for those with region locks or whatever that prevents them from normally acquiring it? Wait till it’s no longer available anywhere? Try to region lock your crack?

Also my comment was not advocating for stealing, it was advocating for ensuring your ownership rights asap after purchase.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago

Yeah, I agree with you completely, indeed I just posted this as in a meme manner.

I love FKM and I paid for it even when it was clear the app wasn't going to be updated that much, I usually don't feel any kind of remorse while pirating, but now this is justified and that is good too.

Regardless this is a good reminder that this can happen anytime with any app or service, being a good or a bad one, having nice or asshole devs/teams behind, and for that piracy will always be a handy solution, I just wish that abandoned apps could somehow being open sourced automatically, but that is a dream.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

Solid.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

So only pirate the stuff you have paid for?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

When the only "valid source" for an app is an app store run by an advertising company that's more then enough to justify it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

"Deprive small indie devs of revenue because advertisers would get a cut" is a bad take. Support small developers or don't use their product. If a small dev chooses to use a platform you don't like then don't use their product.

IMO piracy is only justified when it corrects for a problem. Doing it without consideration for who is being harmed isn't cool.

If taking $1 from Google also means taking $5 from a small dev, you're doing more harm than good

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[–] [email protected] 108 points 2 years ago (7 children)

OOPSIE WOOPSIE!! Uwu We made a fucky wucky!! A wittle fucko boingo! The code monkeys at our headquarters are working VEWY HAWD to fix this!

[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 years ago

uwu kill me

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

You can crack most apps using Lucky Patcher

Make sure you get it from the official website though

[–] mtdyson_01 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Looks like the luckypatcher.com and .info are both terribly spammy. Even with pureapk the download ended up being something called bluejay. Of course the play store chimed in and said installing it would be a horrible idea. I assume I just picked 3 fake sites to download from

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Luckypatchers.com is the real one.
Also you should avoid pureapk, it has malware.
I recommend sticking to apkmirror if the application is available there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Ublock Origin kicks up repeated warnings for this.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

Show screenshot.
Not even virustotal finds anything wrong with the domain.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Is that true? Most of the time I tried it didn't work.

It has only worked for me with an old game called Nimble Quest so far 😂

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Try different things in the selection dialogue before patching.

If you have root you could install Modded Google Play in Lucky Patcher to automatically succeed License checks

Mods also exist to crack apps, Mobilism is a good site but be careful what you download from whom

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Thanks, I'll check that out :)

Nice to see this app still strong.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's works, but it's much more effective on a rooted device.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

TIL, I'm going to have to check this out later for sure

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 years ago (1 children)

"There's an oopsie!"??? This fucking guy deserves to get his apps pirated.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This is an outdated app at beast, I think he wouldn't care, I hope it resurged though.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

There are a lot of processes which Android doesn't let you run anymore, eg how much CPU each app is using.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago

Franco was a nut. He did put out some nice android kernel mods though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's back on the store.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

IMO if an app is pulled from Google Play their license verification should just return true.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Yeah, I agree, gladly the app is back in the store... And it even got a very much needed update!

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