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I have developed an Application for iPhone. In some countries, there are some places you can go, give your iDevice and they will install any App/Apps on it much, much cheaper(for 1$ for any App). How do they do that? - They simply legally buy an Application once and then synchronize "customer's" iDevice with there Account. I think it's illegal, to resell...

So my questions are: Which steps as a developer can I make to protect my Application to be illegally shared? Does Apple do anything against that? Because apple purchases are account related.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, that application is for free, the products must be bought within the Application (In-App Purchase) which will be downloaded after purchase form other server.

One solution could be, if it was possible to get UDID of device and "account-id" I could limit download, let's say, for 5 devices.. I read that, starting with iOS5 it isn't possible to get UDID, or is it? And is such limitation against Apple Rules?

pnuts
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sag
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    Not much you can do about it. – ceejayoz Jan 03 '13 at 17:59
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    Outside of creating your own authentication process when starting the app I can't see much else you can do about it. – Matt C. Jan 03 '13 at 18:08
  • Here is an answer to a pretty similar question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10760894/how-to-avoid-piracy-on-ios-and-generally-in-mobile-apps – Joe Jan 03 '13 at 18:10
  • Thanks for responses @Joe There are also people, for which this purchasing, synchronizing, iTunes seams to be difficult, and they simply go to such places. – sag Jan 03 '13 at 18:19

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I could limit download, let's say, for 5 devices [...] is such limitation against Apple Rules?

Refer to Fernando's answer for your UDID question, but this is absolutely against the developer agreement. Your in-app-purchase needs to be restorable on any devices that user owns. It is somewhat unlikely, of course, that a user owns more than five iDevices, so if you want to take your chances you can. That said, I know of instances where Apple have come down on people who tried to limit apps 'per device'.

if it was possible to get UDID of device and "account-id" I could limit download, let's say, for 5 devices

If by 'account-id' you mean the iTunes username that downloaded/bought your app, then no, it's not possible. You don't have access to any information about the purchaser, I'm afraid.

lxt
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  • Thanks for answer. That is very bad news for me. What about telling Apple which Accounts are doing that? Will they block this accounts/credit cards/installed apps? Of course I have to prove that. Is that enough if I get installed some application on my device from those accounts? – sag Jan 03 '13 at 19:39
  • No, Apple is unlikely to do anything about it. – ceejayoz Jan 04 '13 at 18:23
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The companies I worked for so far refrained from doing such restrictive DRM because it's more possible that you will harm a customer by mistake than you get anything. Don't waste your time implementing this. You don't simply get people to buy your stuff by annoying them. People that get your app this way in general can't be convinced to buy

But if you must do it, here's a workaround to have a unique device identifier after iOS5:

https://github.com/gekitz/UIDevice-with-UniqueIdentifier-for-iOS-5

Fernando Mazzon
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  • There is much to be said about the damaging effects of DRM and I think you would be hard-pressed to find many developers who support who support the idea. However it isn't very often that the developers are the one in the position to make the call whether it should be added or not. – Matt C. Jan 03 '13 at 19:04
  • Edited and added a workaround for the device identifier if he must do it and has no choice :) – Fernando Mazzon Jan 03 '13 at 19:12
  • @Fernando Mazzon thanks. I hope Apple will not reject my application, if I do that.. Can they? – sag Jan 03 '13 at 19:28
  • Can they? Yes. They can always reject your app, even if there's nothing wrong with it. They reserve the right to not publish whatever they feel like. – Fernando Mazzon Jan 03 '13 at 19:31