Adobe AIR Development

[MSohm]

Thanks to everyone for your feedback and for continuing to flag this issue to us. It has been instrumental in how we are revising the current backup and restore scheme to ensure developer assets are protected. We expect this to be available within a month of the planned BlackBerry PlayBook OS2.0 release. In the meantime, as several posters have noted, we encourage everyone to protect their applications against piracy using any of the standard numerous methods mentioned in this discussion.

[Acenet]

Thanks peter9477 for the explanations!

So now I understand better the solution from NICK_312HOLDINGS:

a live check when app. is run for the first time, involving the device+BB IDs and the AppWorld key.

Is there some tutorial around describing this approach in detail? (specially for IDs info retrieval)

(and thx MSohm for the update)

[MauriceRice]

RIM has heard us and are working on the problem: Here is the response to my query via the support form in the Vendor Portal

--------------------

Hello Maurice,

Thank you for your email.  Our Management and Legal team are investigating this as we speak.

We apologize for the issues this is causing.

Kind Regards,

Ryan

BlackBerry App World

---

From: appworldwebform@blackberry.com
Sent: 1/29/2012 8:18:39 PM
To: appworldvendorsupport@blackberry.com
Cc:
Subject: App World Vendor Support

Event id: (personal info removed)

Company Name (personal info removed) Vendor ID (personal info removed) Contact email (personal info removed)@sympatico.ca Application Name What's up Issue Vendor Portal - Manage User Accounts Tier 1 Problem other Issue Details I have become aware that the bar file for my app and the apps of many other authors have been pirated and are available for download on a particular file sharing site. I am aware of an open ticket to investigate the certainty that the DM backups expose unencrypted bar files and I am also aware that the PlayBook is open to rooting. Please let me know what I should do about my piracy concerns and also, if possible, tell me when RIM will be address the underlying security lapses that have exposed my app to piracy.

[knottyrope]

just my take

I found a few games to sideload (not telling so they wont be stolen more), I did put them on my device and tried them out. I also told many people about them and they bought the games. I also did a review of the games. I have deleted most of them now and plan to buy the two I really like.

I know some people that refuse to pay for games or apps and they make a decent income. I dont get it at all but that hoarders show might tell us something.

I hope RIM can do something about this as it is unfair to those that make all these nice apps.

one thing that might help is demos, trials, limited versions so people can see what your work does. I have bought enough garbage over the years wishing there was a trial/demo before I wasted my money.

[knottyrope]

Last night I found 3.2 gigs of android apps for free and found  a site dedicated to stealing playbook apps but could not see much

unless I joined it. I did not join it since the amount of popups on the site were crazy.

I also found a score of playbook apps that are being pirated now, over 24 big names (gameloft, rovio, clapfoot) can be sideloaded.

[peter9477]

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MSohm wrote:

... we are revising the current backup and restore scheme to ensure developer assets are protected. We expect this to be available within a month of the planned BlackBerry PlayBook OS2.0 release.

---

MSohm, it's been about a month since 2.0 was released, or will be within two days.  Could you provide an update on this please?  Even if it's still going to be a couple of weeks before 2.0.1 is ready, it would be very helpful to know that the improvements will be part of it. 

Even better would be some guidance on the nature of the improvements...  Will programmatic access to license keys be supported?  Just encryption of the backup archive?  Changes to how sideloading works?

[MSohm]

The change will be part of 2.0.1.  I can't provide an exact release date for that, but it'll be close to my original estimate.

The changes in the release involve encryption of the bbb backup file, which is tied to a user's BlackBerry ID account.  This means the applications can only be restored to a BlackBerry PlayBook with the same BlackBerry ID used for the backup.

This also removes the easy access to application files and resources.  Programmatic access to license keys is not part of this release.

[peter9477]

Wow, seriously, concrete info! :-)  Thanks Mark! 

Time to ready some app updates with compelling features so we can start making the pirated versions look entirely unattractive to people...

I do hope the license key stuff will be made a priority too, however, since I really don't expect that root access will be forever unavailable with 2.0. 

Alternatively, if general sideloading were inhibited in some fashion, it would suffice to make piracy relatively unattractive to the bulk of users.

[peter9477]

Bad idea from Peter: make sure you're preparing to put <platformVersion>2.0.1.0</platformVersion> in your bar-descriptor.xml or blackberry-tablet.xml file to take proper advantage of this, once it's available.

See Mark's response below, where he says to use the vendor portal to configure your new file bundle so your update has a "minimum OS version" of 2.0.1 instead, which would signal the App World client not even to download the app.

[MSohm]

To make full use of this you can configure your application in BlackBerry App World so that it only supports/can be downloaded by users who are running version 2.0.1+.  

We've seen that most users upgrade within a month, so making this change around a month after we release the upgrade will allow you to fully make use of this new protection while not alienating many potential customers.