Adobe says it is not providing free copies of Creative Studio 2
forums.adobe.com
forums.adobe.com
Blogs - "You can grab yourself a free, legitimate copy of Photoshop and the rest of the Creative Suite 2, right now, direct from Adobe. No catch."[1][2][3]
Adobe - "You have heard wrong! Adobe is absolutely not providing free copies of CS2!"
1- http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2013/01/grab-photoshop-and-cs2-for-...
2- http://lifehacker.com/5973750/download-adobe-creative-suite-...
3- http://www.petapixel.com/2013/01/07/adobe-may-be-offering-a-...
The cracked version might contain terrible malware. It might still contain activation code that will phone Adobe with your serial number. You probably downloaded it from BitTorrent, which we know is easily trackable. If a serial number is still required, you will be using a number that is well known as a pirated number.
This version will not contain terrible malware (it may even come with updates from the vendor!) It has been modified by the people who wrote it to definitely not contain activation code. You will have downloaded it directly from Adobe at their request, along with their other paying customers. If your serial number is ever reported, you are indistinguishable from a legitimate user. The bar has been raised from "this IP reports a pirated copy" or "this IP downloaded a pirated copy" to individually auditing possibly legitimate customers in person. Adobe can't even include the hash in the list of hashes that will trigger ISP copyright enforcement alerting systems such as "six strikes". Unlike existing cracked versions, the risk for using this is very low.
I too was expecting an interesting business announcement when I clicked the link, and I too was disappointed. However, if you think this is a harmless mistake and no different from the existing Pirate Bay release, you aren't thinking very scrappy. This could easily make CS2 the version of choice for students and startups. (And Mac users can run it in VirtualBox on WinXP)
This whole CS2 thing is total screw up.
It not a free copy. If you use this and they have proof, you would be sued for violating the licenses. Its the same as stealing. Just because they aren't locking you out doesn't mean you can use it.
Notice that I'm not making some philosophical point about software, I'm saying if the license to something says that you must have purchased it to use it, to use it without said license is to "appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully".
"Appropriate", the verb, is also flexible and also does not imply depriving someone of something. You can "appropriate" something when you create art, and you can be accused of "cultural appropriation", but in neither case is anyone deprived of what you appropriated.
So shut up. The argument about semantics is shit and you should stop repeating it.
Quit naming, start describing.
Much as it is tiresome but legitimate for trademark holders to challenge misuse of their marks lest they become generic.
Collins: to take (something) from someone, etc. without permission or unlawfully, esp in a secret manner
Both of these trivially apply here.
A lot of these pirates will be younger and or students who will go on to work in the industry and help Adobe maintain it's software hegemony.
It's a little regrettable that Adobe maintains so much control over the market, but as a creative professional myself, I can't find much that can actually compete with their software, especially for the price.
Honestly curious - was money not an issue would you be able to find something better? Is Photoshop and the likes from Adobe truly "high-end" or is there something less popular, more expensive, perhaps harder but "better": technically, in it's capabilities?
Don't think there's really a replacement for photoshop though. The autodesk tools are more to replace the After Effects / Premier / etc. parts of the creative suite.
As someone who uses this software and occasionally tries the alternatives, I would say that there isn't really anything better out there than Adobe software. But it's also quite affordable when you put it in perspective with how much you can do with it over time.
Would it have been so hard to say something like, 'These downloads and keys are provided for users who already possess a valid CS2 license. If you have not paid for any of these products, you are not entitled to use them.' ?
Makes me lean more towards publicity stunt.
For news sites that have not redacted or said something about this error, many of their readers are still going to be pushed towards downloading a free 'legitimate' program.
If a movie studio broadcast a brand-new movie over the air for free by mistake, would it be illegal for me to record it? Would I have to delete it? I'm pretty sure I couldn't put it up on a server for free download, otherwise I could do that with NFL games right now.
Does the fact that they require a license key (or make you click a box saying "I own a license") change this from legal to illegal?
Definitely not. They should have released a version that doesn't not require a license key to use, but they were too lazy to open up the source code so they're giving out the special keys instead.
The fact is the program is their copyright, so you can't download it (or use it, or share it) without a license, under penalty of a lawsuit.
If an algorithmic trading company that is killing it happens to mistakenly leave a link to the copyrighted source code, can I use it? What if they publish their algorithm on the front page with no explanation? What if they publish it on the front page with a note saying "Free, take it!" but then retract that, saying it was a rogue employee? What if the CEO sends it to the WSJ or posts it to a comment box on another site? What if they make t-shirts with it, and a huge banner on the side of their building?
Basically, at what point of ridiculousness does the protection break down (if any)?
In this case it's probably buried in the EULA for the non-activation version that you still need a valid CS2 license. While not all EULAs are enforcable, this seems like a pretty clear case where that condition would be upheld in court.
Your examples are all a bit silly, because that's what we have licenses for. In general, I would say if you found code with no license, or code being made available contrary to the license in the headers, it's not suitable for including in any project. I think a court would agree that a reasonable developer, finding what looks like proprietary code with no license attached, should not copy or derive code from that sample.
The t-shirts and huge banner are a funny case, because if you consider Oracle v Google ( or any other IP case involving open source ), it's entirely possible to make code available and retain control over it. Hell, even copyleft licenses are based on the idea that you can distribute something but legally restrict it's use.
In short, if you make a creative work you have broad control over how it's used, even if it's technically possible to use that work in ways you don't allow. In the absence of an explicit license, it's only safe to assume that you have no permission to use anything.
There was a recent article regarding code that is not explicitly licensed on GitHub, which pretty much parrots this notion: http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/github-needs...
Code without an explicit license is protected by copyright and is by default All Rights Reserved. The person or people who wrote the code are protected as such. Any time you're using software you didn't write, licensing should be considered and abided.
Even though I can see what Mickey Mouse looks like, I can't make a t-shirt with his face on it and sell it. Even though I can see Adobe's source code, I can't use it without permission. Your copyleft note is very good as well, btw. I can see GNU source code, but there are still restrictions on use.
Thanks!
Copyright is called that because its about creating new copies, not reading an existing one.
edit: I find it funny that on one hand, when 'stealing' comes up, people who reject IP law say 'but it's not like physical objects, they still have it'. Then when licenses come up, it's like 'finding a book on a bus'.
This (having GPLed code laying around) is a 'found book' scenario. You've got a copy that you didn't violate copyright to make, thus it's legal to use.
EULAs are a non-copyright attempt to control this usage. They used to be based on the idea that any and all copying, incidental or otherwise, was prohibited and thus to use software (and copy it into memory) you needed a license. But this has been specifically denied in current US copyright law.
Blanket permission is now given for copying where it's an inherent part of using the work. This supports the idea that usage is generally unrestricted (unless you or your agent acquired this specific copy by license). Which makes sense; they'd have called it UsageRight instead of CopyRight if they meant that.
Now EULAs are (usually) based on the Uniform Commercial Code but that requires a contract (of sale) which can, of course, only be binding on the original parties and their agents.
So again, why would a EULA be enforceable on software a user found?
As for forum humor, do you know what I find funny? It's when someone takes caricatures of different people's views on different topics, conflates them, declares them inconsistent, and shoots down an unrelated argument based on this trail of "logic".
It never goes away (modulo expiration). The copyright owner has to grant an explicit license. Usually you get one by paying a fee.
Last week a non-free documentary about Minecraft was seeded on BitTorrent by the owners. It was implied, but they never included an explicit license, so it was unclear whether downloading and seeding it was a copyright violation.
In the case of shareware, the copyright holder grants a universal license for distribution.
Go read a little about the differences between copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and patents. It's not that hard to get the basic ideas.
That way you can gather potentially useful data, and perhaps change your mind later, while not requiring any support and resources beyond 0.001% of a CPU somewhere.
Having said that, this is bad for the GIMP guys
I think the PR team at Adobe labeled this as free or, at the very least, pitched at reporters that way, and I frankly don't think this is a problem or that they're upset about it.
I'm not clear what Adobe did wrong here, other than actually try to not completely screw people running very old versions of their software.
Sadly, no one would seriously make an accusation that they were screwing up if they had just shut off the validation servers and posted an note to their knowledge base, ID #FU-CS2-15-01734-81-CS6-plz.
==From Adobe
https://twitter.com/Adobe/status/288382433391435777
If this is meant to be related it's borderline genius.
Should have just made CS4 free and had more people jump onto the upgrade bandwagon!
Sounds like it isn't free and was never free. What they did was provide download links for CS2 products with corresponding license keys. The catch was that only those who previously purchased this product could legally use it. It's a kinda of honor system.
Yes, you can get away with using it without paying for it, but that doesn't make it free or legal.
Also, this seems like a non-issue. As I understand it, they've built a version that doesn't require activation and takes a special serial number, so they can phase out the CS2 activation servers. Some blogger (shocker, at Gizmodo) being fast and loose with the facts, well, got that wrong. Other blogs copied that mistake (a real problem in the "blogosphere"), Adobe took down the page that was linked, Monday rolls on. We're talking about software that won't even run on an Intel Mac here, people.
The rest of this story is, "hey, check out the beating Adobe is taking on their forum!" Thanks, blogs. You win again.
Other than that, agree with your post.
It's the price we pay for getting news as fast as we do.
The expectation for immediate news is damaging in a lot of ways, this one is just the worst and most visible.
The idea that getting things fast and wrong is a staple of "media in general" is ridiculous. The vast majority of the media acquitted themselves fine here.
I'm perfectly aware of what I can read. I wish blogs were a bit higher-standard, so I could enjoy them as well without the reservations that it requires.
EDIT: Okay, now that you've ninja-edited in a second paragraph, I'll respond to that too.
Even CNN is guilty of this. "This Just In" during Hurricane Sandy ran some Twitter troll's report of the NYSE flooding. Remember Ryan Lanza? Yep, "This Just In" as well. Half of the rest of the world sees the story on CNN.com and says, hey, that's a confirm, it aired on CNN! It's probably an associate producer manning the desk straight out of J-school, and that big "Publish" button is pretty God damned alluring.
Something about blogs, even under the CNN umbrella, seems to make facts a second-class citizen. "Breaking" doesn't mean the same thing that it did a couple decades ago, and integrity is crumbling with Internet journalism.
Because:
> The contacts that journalists have can usually give a quick off the record "that's not correct" and kill a story like this.
Note the "off the record" part. You can't do something like that with forums; whatever you write there is public and will be regarded as official statement of the company, whether it is or not.
In cases like this where the morality of the company is not in question, journos don't have any reason to distrust the spokespeople. "That's incorrect. Give me ten minutes to call legal." Bam. Dead story.
You'd be surprised how much you can do once you have the right phone numbers. The main switchboard is never the right one.
Other commenter's right, too, there is a lot of institutional knowledge at journalism shops. A casual newsroom "who do we know at Acme?" or "who likes us at the Department of Labor?" almost never goes unanswered.
A wise reporter once told me half of reporting is who will answer the phone, the other is deadlines.
Tech people have this stuff, too, particularly in the backbone transit game. White courtesy phone, that sort of thing; BGP flaps don't go through technical support. Those numbers are guarded closely, though, because they usually ring 3-4 feet from a NOC on-duty engineer.
(Quit making me type "blogosphere". I'm going to develop a rash.)
The links are not down. Someone listed them here:
http://www.hotukdeals.com/freebies/adobe-cs2-creative-suite-...
I tried a few and they appeared to start (although I didn't actually download them).
So, yes, the link is down.
[1]: http://gizmodo.com/5973730/grab-photoshop-and-cs2-for-absolu...