Pirated Android App Sites, Seized

CEBU, Philippines - In what has been described as a first instance of its kind, the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation recently seized three of the top online venues where pirated apps for the mobile Android OS could be readily found.

The splash pages of Applanet (www.applanet.net), AppBucket (www.appbucket.net) and SnappzMarket (www.snappzmarket.com) now don an "FBI Anti-Piracy Warning", informing netizens who attempt to access the sites that the three have been "seized by the FBI pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by a United States District Court".

With piracy and intellectual property copyrights being a highly sensitive issue today, the seizure is one which can not be described as surprising, one which follows after a series of initiatives by different online entities and enforcement agencies - like Google's Anti-Piracy Campaign - pegged to pin down the activities of pirates and pirate sites.

Applanet, AppBucket and SnappzMarket have been noted to provide user access to paid-for Android Apps which should legally have been purchased by users from authorized online app-sales venues.

Based on a Google Search's cached content details, the three sites hosted a significant number of apps, with Applanet advertising to have more than 15,000 apps. Applanet also rated a Facebook following of more than 88,000 likes and had a Twitter account with 21,000 followers. SnappzMarket's Facebook likes summed up to 16,400, while AppBucket had 492 likes.

With piracy and apps making headlines over the previous months, the increase and proliferation of pirated apps can be linked with the steady increase in the number of mobile smartphone users.

Matched with the release of new smartphone models, from entry-level to premium-priced, top-of-the-line units, mobile app developers now have to contend with pirates pirating their creations, apart from thinking about the highly competitive status of the application development and release industry.