Script of my national radio report yesterday on the controversy
regarding Adobe's changes to their Terms of Service
- - -
So I think it's probably true that most people who use modern
computers these days are likely to interact sometimes with Adobe
technologies one way or another. The PDF document format traces back
to Adobe in the early 90s. Photoshop is from Adobe, which really has
become something of a verb as in "photoshopping an image", and goes
back to the late 80's. And there are lots of other graphics and video
and more where Adobe dominates the creative pipelines.
And what's happened with Adobe like with so many other firms is that
they've moved from a model where you buy the software and install it
on your computer and that's all you usually pay, to these "running in
the cloud" models where you have to pay ongoing subscription fees for
access. From a corporate profit center standpoint the attraction of
the subscription model is obvious, but this hasn't always gone over
well with users.
Now of course these cloud and subscription models almost always have
Terms of Service agreements that users have to accept before they can
use the services. And it seems commonly *accepted* that most people
don't really read these in depth and of those who do most don't have
the background to completely understand them given the dense legalese
they're usually written in.
So what's happened with Adobe is very recently they changed their
terms of service and apparently asked users to accept the new terms.
And even though the changes may be *relatively* minor, the fact that
they made changes drew attention to the terms of service for many
users for pretty much the first time, and they really didn't like the
expansive nature of the rights Adobe gives itself to access and
inspect users' content.
Now in most respects what Adobe is doing isn't all that much different
from what various firms with cloud-based services are doing and have
in their terms of service agreements, but as users have been
increasingly pushed into these cloud-based systems rather than being
able to keep these applications completely local on their own
computers, and now as the complexities of AI systems and what data AI
has access to has entered into the mix as well, we seem to be reaching
a kind of inflection point where for many people this has just all
gone too far and a "we're not going to take it" blowback is being
triggered from many users.
So over the last few days the Web has been flooded with articles and
YouTube videos condemning Adobe, indeed using terms like "Adobe
Apocalypse", "Adobe went too far", "the end of Adobe", and so on. And
while obviously there's considerable emotion in play with this,
there's no denying that many people are genuinely very upset and many
are saying they're ending their Adobe subscriptions and moving to
competing products wherever they can, even though that can cause them
considerable hassles given how widely used Adobe products are for
creating and exchanging work products during the creation of so much
content.
Adobe has attempted to reply to this controversy but as you might
guess, this seems to have just made many users even angrier at Adobe.
So I don't know how this is going to turn out with Adobe but I think
it's reasonable to view this as a pretty dramatic warning to many
firms, that the kinds of subscription/cloud models and terms of
service that they've been pushing users into won't necessarily be
widely acceptable indefinitely, and that it only takes a single
misstep and a few days for large firms like these to put at risk the
good will of users that took years or even decades to accumulate.
Many of the users of these firms, especially firms that dominate in
particular areas, are starting to say that they feel like they're
being pushed around, and we're now seeing evidence that they're
unlikely to put up with this indefinitely. It seems likely that these
firms can ignore this changing landscape only at their own
considerable risk in the long run, with all the complex ramifications
that has going forward.
Stay tuned, this is going to be interesting!
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
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