Moket's own "Made in China"

It was brough to my attention over the weekend that Moket had become the target of the ultimate form of flattery some would say - having a product pirated by the Chinese.

A number of people in the Flash Lite community spotted what looked "kind of like" one of our MoCarbon Flash Lite wallpaper products on the Nokia Software Market. You be the judge though - Moket's original (designed by the talented Matt Pollitt) and the pirate rip-off version by Shanghai Jibiao Info Tech Co. Ltd. It's also popped up on a number of other "free mobile software portals" around the place.

Close but no cigar Shanhai Jibiao!

A number of people have asked me in recent times about piracy in the mobile market and what we do about it. The simple fact is that mobile "content" has such a short shelf life, that it's basically not economically viable to spend money on patents or trademarks for everything you release. Therefore, the idea is to release and make your revenue from the short "burst" of activity, and then let it join the "long tail" of available products (well, I could argue that 99% of mobile content is in the long tail already anyway). Of course if it was a larger mobile application or tool then of course you would be protecting it - but for wallpapers, screensavers and casual games, the cost of protection would nearly always be greater than the revenue from the single asset.

Anyway, with all that said, if you see any more dodgy versions of content that you know has been ripped off from someone else, it can be nice to drop them a line just to let them know. Thanks to Scott and Johnny for alerting me to the bizarro-Moket content out there already.