Sharing cracked software was a new experiment on my personal blog — alongside other experiments like current news, movie sharing, and various IT mirror downloads. Today I’ll talk about what I learned from those experiments; I’ll cover the others another day.
What I Gained
Sharing cracked software did bring a lot of traffic. WeChat followers went up, and I met some people. Nearly half the search-driven traffic came in on cracked-software keywords, and returning visitors were more common than before — some people followed long-term, checking whether new cracked software had been uploaded. Daily visitor counts rose substantially, since I include a link to my own site in the cracked software.
WeChat official account followers rose too, though a portion didn’t stick: some followed, used it, and unfollowed immediately; another batch unfollowed every time the account published. Keeping followers is genuinely hard. I’m a tech-and-software-development account, but most people arriving via cracked software aren’t developers — mismatched interests are the main reason for the churn.
What It Cost
Sharing means providing downloads, and file-hosting links get reported and die constantly. I can’t check and refresh links every day, so I had to provide stable download service myself.
Providing downloads sent network traffic soaring. CDN traffic that used to last a year on 10 GB was consumed in about a month after downloads were added, and running costs rose two- to threefold.
The Pressure
Domestic Copyright Pressure
At home you face threats from domestic agents. The typical case is “SijieMarketing” (a Chinese software reseller) filing complaints that the cracked CleanMyMac infringes — sending legal emails, reporting the WeChat account. The prospect of a lawsuit is the main reason fewer and fewer Chinese sites share cracked software, now that internet courts exist and suing a domestic site is fast and convenient.
Overseas Copyright Pressure
The problem isn’t only domestic — it exists abroad too, typically through the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Unlike at home you won’t be dragged into court, but since a site’s traffic depends heavily on search engines, once your page is reported as infringing under the DMCA, Google removes it from search results, which cuts off the source of traffic almost entirely. If too many pages infringe, the whole site can suffer.
Operating Cost Pressure
As I shared more cracked software, download traffic exploded — one month used up what used to last a year. Continuing down that path, I might not be able to afford it. I make nothing from it, and bandwidth is expensive — it’s the same reason Baidu’s cloud drive throttles free users. Traffic and storage costs for download service are very high.
Conclusion
Taken together, sharing cracked software is clearly not sustainable. One copyright holder winning a lawsuit and it’s over, and the cost outweighs the return by a wide margin. So I’ll gradually slow down sharing cracked software until I stop completely. That’s what I learned from this experiment: this path doesn’t work in China, and even hosting the site abroad, download traffic is still a problem.