Learning to work with a big software package makes it harder to switch to another editing suite. Free cs2 does make sense.
From the forums:
" Dov Isaacs wrote: What is true is that Adobe is terminating the activation servers for CS2 and that for existing licensed users of CS2 who need to reinstall their software, copies of CS2 that don't require activation but do require valid serial numbers are available."
On that same page users mentioned that this "looked like a legitimate product form the official web-site."
Earlier HN threads called this whole thing 'marketing', I'm not going to say this wasn't an accident. I'm saying that: a thing like this, where people get excited over nothing could have been avoided with just a little notice on the download page. That would've been enough to stop this as it was going on. Giving people access to software you don't want them to use is silly.