Remember guys, this is why we don't pay for the apps.

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 Even when it was outdated (which I think that's the cause it got booted from the PlayStore?).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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80 comments

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
- 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
  
  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)
  
  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.
  
  Back in the day I would often "pirate" games I owned on a CD because ot was faster than finding said CD.
  
  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
- okay but if that's your purpose then there's no problem with purchasing and pirating at the same time.
  
  Absolutely. I do that regularly. Purchase to support the creators, pirate to meet some specific use case.
  
  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
  
  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
  
  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
  
  Sure I'm just thinking about how you'd write a law or policy that accommodated both reasonable scenarios
  
  well it's a really interesting concept. there's really no other form of media where you could put something out there and then recall it somehow. like if you wrote a book that you didn't like, there's absolutely no legal way you could prevent people from reading it, etc. sort of ties into the Barbra Streisand effect
  
  What's interesting with the comparison to books is that you can stop it from being published. You can't force people to give up the copy they already bought, but they can't make more copies and distribute it.
  Hard to draw that distinction in the digital world
  And if you want a better comparison, though of YouTube like a drive-in theater. You're not allowed to make a copy of the film with your camcorder and go distribute it.
  
  it's almost more of a philosophical question than a legal one. sure, maybe they can prevent you from recording the drive-in movie and showing it to other people, but would they have the moral authority to say that you couldn't repeat the storyline to someone else?
  let's say someone produces some documentary that ends up containing some hideously embarrassing error. something that could really ruin some third party's life. you pull the documentary from theaters, you pull it from streaming services, anybody who owns a copy owns it illegally. but, anybody who's seen it, or heard it described, could sit down in front of an audience and act out the entire thing piece by piece, attributing the entire thing to the original producer's name.
  it ties into a line of thinking I had the other day when reading my credit card number to somebody over the phone. me talking to another person, giving them digit by digit, it was like two computers talking but we were people. if we had been computers, using a speaker and a microphone to communicate numbers in that way, we would have laughed at it and called it stone age technology, but that still how humans communicate with each other.
  
  This gets into a weird debate about the difference between reproducing a thing and describing a thing. With sufficiently accurate description you can create a reproduction.
  And when you take that into the realm of computing, where we've functionally automated the process of describing things with extreme accuracy it gets really blurry. But we can all agree that "take what you want, give nothing back" is not a good way to run a society, least of all an economy :D
  So we're left with the task of crafting internally consistent legislation that attempts to allow certain types of reproductions, but not others.
  The thing is, this is the type of debate just should be happening at the administrative level, in Congress, etc. But instead, special interest groups and lobbyists are doing the legislating on this stuff.
  
  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.
  
  Playing devil's advocate here, but is it truly a public good to have as many works as possible accessible to the public?
  What if misinformation outweighs real information in the aggregate?
  
  I'd say generally yes but maybe not in every instance. Consider it an overall principle rather than a hard no exceptions rule.
  That said, copyright/creator control is not the correct tool to use to do so.
  
  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.
  
  Why? How is it better for society and people overall if they have the power to do this?
  Allowing the creators to profit is understandable and necessary in our current system, but what benefit is gained for the public by them being permitted to stop distribution altogether?
  If there is a benefit to the public and society that I am not seeing, then ok, but 'they created it so they should control it' is harmful to the people at large, and that should be prioritized over a creator's ego or desire for control.
  
  Because the right to determine distribution channels and the right to prevent distribution are inseparable. I challenge you to write a law that successfully implements one but not the other. Any law you write that guarantees a creator control over who distributes their work and how will inherently allow that creator to literally or functionally prevent distribution.
  The alternative is saying that creators don't have a right to control distribution at all - anyone must be allowed to reproduce and distribute, even if not for free - and that is a known disincentive to invention and economic growth; there's a reason we only enforce that requirement in select places like standards and protocols
  
  so I'll actually add really good YouTube videos to my Plex library
  How do you achieve that, manually or automated?
  
  manually.
- 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.
  
  "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
  
  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.
- 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.
- Solid.
- I own many many hard books that I've purchased or had ordered from my local bookstores.
  I also have a kindle that I use every evening and have never paid for an ebook.
- So only pirate the stuff you have paid for?
- 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.
  
  "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
  
  IMO piracy is only justified when it corrects for a problem
  and big tech mass surveillance isn't a problem?
  
  .... You're suggesting pirating a small dev's app....to protest surveillance by the app store owner?
  That's not how it works. If you don't like the policies of the store, then ask the dev to put it on another store. If they refuse, don't use their product because they suck.
  Choosing to limit your product to a shitty store is a developer choice. That gives you the right to not use their product, not the right to steal it. Otherwise, pay for it and then install a cracked version to remove the surveillance or whatever
  
  Lol, no it's not.

80 comments