US authorities target app pirates

In the USA, Federal authorities have seized three domains which they believe are involved in the illegal distribution of pirated Android apps.  The three domains are applanet.net, appbucket.net and snappzmarket.com. Anyone visiting those sites will now see this alert:

US Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said “Criminal copyright laws apply to apps for cell phones and tablets, just as they do to other software,music and writings. These laws protect and encourage the hard work and ingenuity of software developers entering this growing and important part of our economy. We will continue to seize and shut down websites that market pirated apps, and to pursue those responsible for criminal charges if appropriate". The Department of Justice said this was the first time it had seized websites to prevent the infringement of copyrighted mobile device apps. 

During the operation, FBI agents downloaded thousands of copies of popular copyrighted mobile device apps from the alternative online markets suspected of distributing copies of apps without permission from the software developers who would otherwise sell copies of the apps on legitimate online markets for a fee. In most cases, the servers storing the apps sold by these alternative online markets were being hosted in other countries, and so international law enforcement partners assisted in obtaining or seizing evidence stored on these servers in countries including the Netherlands and France.  The DOJ said nine search warrants were also executed in six different districts across the US as part of the operation. 

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/August/12-crm-1033.html

Deloitte's Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) predictions here and more on apps here  by clicking on 'telecommunications' and find "So many apps, so little to download"