Jack Underwood, developer of the famous “Today Calendar” app has been working on a really creative way to punish pirates and it looks like he struck gold. After he revealed that 85% copies of his calendar app are pirated copies, he decided to take action and implement a unique way of dealing with pirates.
Many developers in the past have tried to deal with pirates, because it’s a growing concern of the Android community. Those who love an app typically pay for it in order to show their support for the hours and hard work that the developer put into it, but then there are the pirates. Today Calendar Pro is a pretty neat little app based on Google’s material design philosophy which is currently available for merely $2.99. The application has a 4.5 star rating which means its quality is outstanding, so there’s no reason not to pay the $2.99 price.
As for the upcoming update, Today Calendar Pro will introduce an algorithm that tries to figure out if the app is pirated or not. If it is, then is will insert random pirate-related events into your calendar as a subtle reminder. An image released by the developer shows an event called “Walk the plank” with a note saying “That’s what ye get fer piratin’ matey”. This could encourage people to pay $2.99 for the full app, or at least feel bad for pirating it. Jack Underwood states that it’s likely people will simply get bored of these pirate events and eventually buy the app to get rid of them.
This is a pretty unique approach to combating piracy, and it saves the developer a lot of time and money from fighting piracy using conventional methods. It’s fun, and terribly annoying for pirated copies, but the question is: how efficient is the application at detecting whether or not it is pirated or not? We found that users always manage to find workarounds for these sorts of things, but it’s interesting to see a new approach.
You can find the Today Calendar Pro app on Google Play Store, so make sure you pay the $6 and not walk the plank. Meanwhile, we’d love if you could give us a plus on our G+ page.