I really think that it should be considered false advertising to use the words “buy” “sell” “Purchase a copy,” etc.for any IP transaction that does NOT include full “first sale” rights.
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No it is not 
Currently there’s no free alternative with the level of polish and features that Photoshop offers and commercial alternatives still lag years behind in feature completion.
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There is a slightly stronger case to be made for Inkscape, but neither it nor GIMP is a remotely satisfactory replacement for their Adobe counterparts. In fact, to be honest, GIMP is what made me give up on the idea of an open-source desktop for good. It’s pervasively unpleasant to use, because it isn’t made for users, it’s made for its developers (to prove they’re as good at solving technical problems as Adobe’s developers, which I’m sure they are).
This isn’t a tribal thing for me, because I see myself as a 1337 hax0r as much as a design person. I get exactly why GIMPfolk would be pissed off by what I’m saying here, and demand that I list each specific problem so they can shoot it down. But it’s like… sorry, I’m just not into you, and no amount of bugzilla tickets will change that, even if I had the inclination, which I don’t, because see above.
I like that I can just pay someone for software that lets me get stuff done with minimal friction. I liked when I could pay $300 or whatever for Photoshop, because it meant Adobe were on the hook to supply something that justified that price (and they did). But despite ultimately costing far more, Photoshop CC doesn’t have to justify costing more than $10. They clearly admire Autodesk’s business model of making products that are both cheap crap and ruinously expensive.
Unfortunately I’m very pessimistic about this whole landscape.
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At least you can pull those files back onto your own machine easily, and Dropbox doesn’t lock them up with DRM (at least, not yet). I wouldn’t use it or any similar service as a place for permanent storage of sole copies of files, though. I also wouldn’t put sensitive documents on there unencrypted – another downside of cloud-based services is a lack of privacy.
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I don’t feel like it’s childish, I feel like it’s a symptom of our anti-social zeitgeist. It goes right back to Adam Smith: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. Our system says you don’t need your customers to like you, you just need them to have no better option than to buy from you. And, of course, if everyone follows the same philosophy then dealing with someone who doesn’t think of you as a pawn in their game of wealth accumulation just isn’t an option.
They’re supposed to look down on you and you are supposed to resent them for it, and somehow we’re all supposed to be better off for that.
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The executive order says this in a bit of it:
(i) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material,
or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of,
any person included on the list of Specially Designated Nationals and
Blocked Persons maintained by the Office of Foreign Assets Control whose
property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order;
So, Adobe justification for this is that they would have to check every single Venezuelan account to see if the person or entity owning that account has in any way done any of that for any of the other persons or institutions or entities that are on the “black list”. As that is a pain in the butt to say the least, then well, fuck you, I’m cutting service.
Now, this is small compared to what can happen. Because this can have enormous negative consequences… for Venezuelan opposition voices. Because the government doesnt care one fucking bit, but, say, if you ended up moving your newspaper to the web because the government kept not selling you paper, or if you are producing videos with news and analysis and putting them in Youtube, or you registered a DNS domain, or … well, how long till all those providers do the same, and say it is more cost-effective for them not to give ANY service to any Venezuelan at all than to have to run a check to see if they had any commercial dealing with the people and entities on the black list?
(Note that astute readers at this point will realize that the bit on the executive order is NOT limited to Venezuelans, so in theory Adobe and all the rest should be checking EVERYBODY to see if they at some point took some money or gave some service to the Maduro gang… but of course the probability is much higher with Venezuelans so…)
I’m Venezuelan-Spanish. I’m very much on the opposition side. I’m very much in favor of sanctions against some of the people that have diverted a ton of money from Venezuela to enjoy in properties in Florida, Madrid, or funds in Andorra. But well, guess what, the moronic Trump admin manages to do something and achieve the exact opposite of what would be the idea, screwing up the very people they were supposed to be “helping”.
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Well, apparently there is - I just checked and there’s plenty of options for pirated copies of Adobe CC 2019 out there. At a couple of gigs per program, it looks like these aren’t actually cloud-based, but just cloud-enabled programs. (i.e. they run local, but can use the cloud for some features, such as activation/licensing.)
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Leave it to this regime to initiate a situation that crushes people who are actually interested in freedom between the forces of crappy late-stage capitalism (Adobe’s “you can never own the product you pay us for” model) and crappy authoritarian socialism (Maduro’s Venezuela).
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This is why I hate subscription-based licenses! Which reminds me, time to install my ancient copy of Adobe Acrobat on my new computer so I can edit PDFs without having to shell out $$ every month. And my ancient copy of Photoshop and Freehand, bought when you could actually own such software.
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That still leaves the activation problem. Surely emulating the activation server would require cracking Adobe’s encryption.
There are certain companies, Adobe being one of them, that absolutely exult in being hated by their customers. It’s one of the side effects of having a near-monopoly position in the market.
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This kind of garbage is exactly why I refuse to use ANY software subscription. I have a lot of apps that are ancient, no longer supported by the manufacturer, but they’re MINE and nobody can take them away from me. If that means I can’t use all the fancy new toys that they hang onto the core software, so be it. I’ll take that lack, along with the lack of them spying on everything I do hoping they can get data that will let them target me for even more bullshit advertising.
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Er - everyone who has ever read his work.
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To be fair, Cory holds small-l libertarian instincts (as opposed to the “free” market fundamentalism and corporation worship that characterises the large-L Libertarians). He’s never been a proponent of corporations operating completely outside the law and regulatory frameworks.
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Exactly - still libertarian. I would consider myself to be a libertarian socialist and share almost no values with the “republicans who want prostitution and drugs to be legal” Libertarians who dominate the discourse in North America.
I think it’s important that those of us who champion an ideal of live and let live stand up to be counted as (small l if you like) libertarians
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Pirates have been cracking Adobe CC on a regular basis for most of its existence. Doing so is inconvenient, not impossible.
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I think you can get to “live and let live” by a parallel construction without any special regard to personal autonomy or liberty. I mean, choosing not to break some else’s legs is really something I do because I respect their liberty, I do it more because I care about their wellbeing.
It is a lot harder since they went from a “buy this software” to “buy this subscription” model of business.
I kinda get why Adobe did this from a legal stand point, but it is bad optics.
I do believe if they have software downloaded from Creative Cloud, they can continue to USE it, they just can’t update it and there are some features that won’t work, like file conversion from newer versions than the version you have. If they are using cloud services those would stop working. But I don’t have to be connected to the internet and logged into Creative Cloud to use Indesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.
Possible solution - use a VPN to subscribe from another country.
Also - contact your congress person to lift the sanctions.
Isn’t wellbeing tied to liberty? You can’t be free if you aren’t well (and alive!)
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I wish the term “AynCap” was applied to American capital-L Libertarians, because that more accurately encapsulates their short-sighted philosophy of greed and selfishness and delusion.
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