Adobe Activation – Opinion
Isn’t technology great?
Well, it can be a double-edged sword. Take Adobe Photoshop CS2 as an example. Here is a software product that is undeniably the state-of-the-art in imaging technology. The same tool that allows you to clone a 3rd eye on your significant other now uses a new and unique technology called Software Activation. The implementation of activation in Photoshop CS2 is a hot button topic. Ironically, the most vocal, and often nasty, comments about this technology are coming from people who haven’t any idea how activation actually operates in Photoshop CS2 because they haven’t seen it yet. A heated discussion started on the Rob Galbraith’s discussion forum the day Adobe announced CS2. The thread is called PS CS BS; Adobe’s Licensing Absurdity.
The title should tell you something about the tone and passion of this discussion. The basic premise of the argument is that Adobe is sticking it to photographers. Why? Because with this new Photoshop CS2 version, both Macintosh and Windows customers can only run a single license of Photoshop installed on only two computer systems–not to be run at the same time. The End User License Agreement (EULA) has specified this for years! Every current user of Photoshop has already agreed to this license. The only difference in Photoshop CS2 is that Adobe has used some clever technology to ensure users abide by this agreement for both Mac and Windows. If you wish to disagree with this license, you can simply not install the software.
These photographers suggest they are getting “screwed” because if they go on location and, God forbid, the machine running Photoshop explodes and spews shrapnel on the art director, they can’t run a 2nd copy on their “back up” computer. That’s not the case. Each license allows Photoshop to be installed on two machines so there’s nothing stopping a photographer from having a 2nd copy of Photoshop running on location.
The same situation would result if the assistant drops a Hasselblad on a model’s foot, breaking both the foot and camera and sending the model to the emergency room. The difference is you have to buy, at full price, a back-up camera body. That doesn’t appear to be a problem with these photographers. Since they don’t yet have the technology to clone one camera from the original (for free) as they can with software, these photographers have no choice but to pay for a back up camera.
Somehow, it’s reasonable to buy a second camera or computer but not a second license to software. Does anybody see the irony of this position? Photographers, who deal in copyrighted material, intellectual property by definition, seem perfectly willing to pay for tangible property, a second camera, but balk when asked to pay for intellectual property, a second license to some software. Deep down, it seems when these photographers are the consumer, they don’t feel that the intellectual property of others measures up to the value of tangible property. So, the dichotomy is that a photographer’s intellectual property is valued per use while software is supposed to be one price – copy it as often as you like. Not really reasonable.
It seems pretty reasonable to me, however, that Adobe allows you to install two copies of their software as long as you agree not to run both at the same time, they don’t have to offer that much.
As customers of Adobe, we agree not to steal their product (which is easy to do). The activation is well designed and flexible. You can initially install Photoshop CS2 on as many computer systems as you wish. You have 30 days to activate the software after you launch it the first time. You can deactivate the software on a desktop machine and activate it on a back-up laptop in the field if, once again God forbid, a bolt of lightening strikes the main computer. This activation swapping takes a few seconds. Once you return from location you can deactivate the back-up laptop and activate the original desktop machine.
Naturally, you can buy another license from Adobe and have four copies of Photoshop active full time. What? Actually pay for additional copies? What is Adobe thinking? This is akin to skinning alive baby harbor seals or drilling for oil in the Alaskan wilderness. Adobe should just give photographers additional activated copies for the price they charge for technology nearly every pro photographer can’t live without. They sure have us by the short hairs. Let’s complain; let’s stop buying their products. If only we could do this with our hardware… In point of fact, it makes good business sense to own two licenses and use Photoshop on more than one computer at a time. One for reviewing the images with clients and another for an assistant to be processing the shots on a second machine. With Photoshop CS2, Adobe Bridge and the new Camera Raw, this is a legitimate potential workflow. A second license could help reduce the photographer’s workload.
Adobe spends a heck of a lot of money building Photoshop. Like any other company, they deserve to make a profit. It’s a shame legitimate users have to deal with activation when it’s all the thieves that make this necessary. It’s not a perfect world. Adobe doesn’t deserve crap for protecting their investment. As The Donald would say, it’s not personal, it’s business. If Photoshop sucked, we wouldn’t be using it. The software has enormous value and we pay for it because it’s worth the price. I don’t see how the inability to use Photoshop on as many computers as I own being unfair. Adobe tells me up front how many copies I can use for the price of the product. Some suggest that when you purchase software, you have the right to install it on as many computers and even friends’ computers you want. That’s ridiculous, that’s the Napster argument: “it’s fair use! I want to copy it and share it with my friends, my millions of friends all over the world”.
I own a few software products that don’t limit the number of machines I am allowed to install the software on. I don’t expect every software product to allow me to do this and further, if the company does ask me to agree to their terms, I think I should honor the agreement. It’s not as if Adobe charges $3,995.00 for Photoshop. If you think that’s extreme, be aware that many years ago, there were a number of photographers who gladly paid that price for their copies of Live Picture. An upgrade to Photoshop CS2 is a mere $149.00
No one is putting a gun to your head to upgrade to Photoshop CS2. In fact, no one is putting a gun to your head to honor the EULA. If you don’t, you can’t install the software. If you do agree to the EULA, Adobe has the technology to make sure you’re good to your word. If you need another copy, buy it. What other non-software product do you use in your business that comes with a free spare? I’m not referring to some free battery but instead a product that initially cost several hundred dollars that’s so important that a back-up is an absolute necessity to run your business.
After 6 months of testing prerelease copies of Photoshop CS2, I find the activation scheme to be a very well designed and flexible system. Is it perfect? I doubt it. Will someone hack it? Probably. Is it better than the half dozen high-end products I own that require a dongle (hardware device) to utilize the software? I believe so. If you’ve ever lost or damaged a dongle when you need to run a piece of software, you’ll be begging for something as technologically smart as Adobe’s activation. I don’t like activation but it’s not going to stop me from using Photoshop CS2. That’s not an option. Besides, I honor the agreements I make.
Editor’s note: while it’s useful to debate the issue of product activation, the fact is that most customers’ opinions are not really heard unless you use the correct venue to voice them. Adobe has set up an Activation Feedback page at their web site. In general, companies will respond to the majority opinion of their customers and alter their policies accordingly. If you feel strongly on this subject, either pro or con, the best place to register your feedback is at the link provided. It should also be noted that customers who have had problems or issues with activation are in the minority but even if only the minority has had problems, it is useful to make sure Adobe is aware of your particular problem.
April 11th, 2005 at 11:59 pm
Well said Andrew. As a Windows user I’ve had to deal with activation since CS came out, and due to hardware problems have had to do it 3 or 4 times. Each time was merely a couple of mouse clicks and about 30 seconds of my time. No hassle whatsoever. As for the intellectual property question, I guess there are those with hypocritical opinions in every group.
Regards, Steve
April 12th, 2005 at 8:42 am
–>It should also be noted that customers who have had problems or issues with activation are in the minority but even if only the minority has had problems, it is useful to make sure Adobe is aware of your particular problem.
It’s also my understanding (and I’m sure our editor will correct me if wrong) that the activation in CS2 is not the same as the CS Windows version. Some, few, Window users did have issues but that’s not a guarantee that such issues will plague newer users of CS2.
April 12th, 2005 at 10:42 am
You are correct the Activation system is in CS2 is not the same as was used in CS for Windows. For a start it now includes Transfer Activation, and secondly is no longer adversely effected by the System Restore feature of Windows XP. It was System Restore that lay at the heart of many Windows users problems.
April 12th, 2005 at 11:05 am
Ian, that’s interesting to know. I twice had to reactivate after doing a system restore, before my hard drive failed altogether, but it was quite painless, even after installing the new hard drive.
April 12th, 2005 at 11:44 am
Steve,
By a VERY large margin System Restore was the primary reason for reactivation. If you chose to reactivate by Internet then you very rarely had a problem; those who did may well have been trying to cheat the system
Reactivating via the AVR system also had some problems the main culprit being the inability of the user to read and listen… read the Phone Activation screen and see that it read “Repair”, and listen to the AVR asking if they required Activation or Repair. If you got it wrong you ran the risk of denied activation.
I’ve read a lot of the complaints regarding Activation and received many hundreds of carping emails. I’ve been using the old system since April 2003 (6 months before it went public) and the new system on both Win and Mac since early October 04. I’ve not experienced any problems; at least none that weren’t of my own making.
April 12th, 2005 at 1:50 pm
While I agree with gist of the argument, if we want to run the “intellectual property is still property” argument, then perhaps the full implications of this should be set out, not just the bits that suit the activation debate. Copyright should just protect Adobe from the unauthorised use and reproduction of its products. However, as the rights provided are exclusive there is the potential for an outcome that is not Pareto optimal – in other words – despite a marginal cost that is close to zero, a profit maximising price can and usually will be charged, depriving many consumers of enjoyment of that product (does piracy equal untapped demand equal profit maximising price?)
April 12th, 2005 at 2:41 pm
Activation seems reasonable enough to me, it simply enforces a license agreement.
One question though, say I have a Desktop and a Laptop – both with CS2 installed. One day my desktop just dies on me, it simply won’t boot up. Rather than spend several hundred dollars to have my old machine get fixed, I choose to simply by a new desktop.
Now since my previous PC crashed and I would be unable to open up Photoshop to deactivate that copy and transfer the activation…what will happen? Does Adobe have the technology to allow activation on my new machine while making sure my previous copy never launches. Or…will I simply be unable to install a new copy because I was never able to transfer the activation?
April 12th, 2005 at 3:58 pm
Actually I just found the answer to my question through Adobe’s website…
“If access to the original computer is not available, you may not be able to activate on the new computer.”
Although it is an unlikely scenario, I am a little bothered by this. Just because my hardware crashed, should that warrant purchasing new software licenses as well? I don’t think so.
The other arguement against Activation is that it would only be an annoyance to law abiding users. Anybody with a pirated copy could simply sidestep activation, so who is Adobe protecting their software from – their own customers?
April 12th, 2005 at 4:10 pm
Ryan,
You won’t need to purchase new license. If your old computer dies and therefore can’t be deactivated then you can call Adobe Support and ask that they “reset the counter”. With CS this happened automatically after a period of time and effectively allowed you to have MORE than two computers activated and in use at the same time. This facility was provided so that folk who upgraded their computers on a regular basis didn’t need to keep phoning Adobe Support. Unfortunately there were also plenty of folk who figured this out and used it to their advantage. I don’t know if Adobe will continue providing this facility when CS2 ships.
April 12th, 2005 at 4:10 pm
I think it speaks volumes that each time Mr. Rodney talks about this issue he misquotes the price of a new license for Photoshop CS. In the US right now it is 599.00 plus your state taxes and shipping – far more expensive in other countries, and Not 149.00 as he keeps saying.
He also glosses over the fact that Adobe clearly state that there may be instances where you LOSE your money and have to buy a new copy. For example selling, or losing your computer.
“We strongly advise transferring activation from the original computer before decommissioning it or uninstalling the product from it. If access to the original computer is not available, you may not be able to activate on the new computer.”
You should also note that Intuit also forces you activate Quickbooks, and after a couple of years they use that process to force you to upgrade to new versions. Adobe say they will support versions of CS over time, but it is not in the license agreement that they will do this. So there is no commitment for them to do so.
It should also be stated that Mr. Rodney gets free software from Adobe. He does not have to buy his copy of Photoshop CS and as such this is essentially a paid editorial.
April 12th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
That makes sense Ian, I’m sure Adobe has considered all the possibilities…
April 12th, 2005 at 4:30 pm
the UPGRADE for CS2 is $149.
True, I don’t pay for my one copy of Photoshop (I only have two machines I need to run it on). It’s hardly free. If you consider spending a few hundred hours of time testing and writing beta reports a deal for getting $149 worth of software, you certainly don’t have a concept of my hourly rates. In fact, that “free” copy is in actuality one of the most expensive copies of Photoshop ever installed as are the other copies provided to alpha and beta testers who work months on each pre-release).
If you sell your copy of Photoshop, how are you “losing”? That’s probably not a good move.
You can upgrade for $149 from any older version.
April 12th, 2005 at 6:13 pm
You don’t make your position clear. I wanted people to understand you are not objective on this issue. You have friends and a solid financial connection to Adobe, maybe you would like to say the activation scheme is dumb, but you can’t because you might offend somebody you know. Who knows, what is clear is you are not objective.
I was not talking about selling Photoshop, but the machine on which Adobe products are installed. Many people will format the drive and that will in MANY, not all cases render the activation/deactivation process useless. Adobe make it clear that they intend to operate on a basis of no trust, and by default will not honor activation where an deactivation has not been done.
Adobe make no commitments in their license agreements with regard to activation. You do not cover this. Nor do you point out that many other companies work just fine without complicated license schemes.
Your perspective focuses purely on the fact that anybody that installs 5 copies of photoshop is a thief. You can not conceive of the reasons people would need to install 4 5 10 copies without paying 650 (old price, 599.00 new price) for each copy. And that is the problem with this type of scheme. Perspective is missing. Neither Adobe nor you can conceive of the ways this will trip people up, and when you find out it does, you will write it off as an aberration, as just one guy and continue on your way.
You make fun of and try to tar those with a view opposing this scheme as criminals without even a nod to the very real problems that have already been experienced, nor do you acknowledge that as Adobe grows more powerful the potential this scheme creates for the abuse of that power.
Your comments and support of this scheme along with the same dubious intellectual property arguments are all over the net. Yet not a single mention of the hundreds of people that have reported problems with the activation scheme. Some who lost their license to CS products altogether and in order to continue working, in order to continue doing business had to buy new copies. You don’t think being deprived of the ability to work is a violation of a users rights?
In closing I found a quote from the VP of anti-piracy at Adobe. His perspective was going after the multiple copies on multiple machines was easiest way for Adobe to cut piracy. In short they knew that the man in the street has no choice. He has to suck it up or lose business.
I think they had other options. It is a well known fact that people have a sense for a fair price for a product. They also have an innate sense of fair use. Adobe know this too. That is why they price upgrades at 149.00. Cos they know that is a price people will pay. Well why not price a license for Photoshop CS at 149.00, then for 600USD I could get 4 licenses, 650 I could get five. Instead I only get two. And those two can only be used by me. Adobe simply have no incentive to do so. And they never will with people like yourself taking their side without thinking it through.
April 12th, 2005 at 6:21 pm
I think a lot of the sour grapes are from people who will no longer be able to “borrow” a Photoshop CD, but will instead have to buy their own copy. I know many people in this same boat and not a one of them are happy. But, what did they expect?
Personally, I think that the Adobe license is fair, especially considering that Photoshop is one of the most frequently copied apps in history. Adobe could have easil justified limiting users to a single registered copy.
Chuck
April 12th, 2005 at 7:26 pm
Well, I have to comment further, especially after Pat’s rant. I have an acquaintance who is a member of a computer club. Someone from the club made a copy of PS6 and distributed it to everyone in the club. I imagine many of them gave it to their friends, in fact it was offered to me. I know they did the same thing with PS7. How many more groups around the world were doing that? Countless I would say. That’s the problem, and if anyone wants to rant it should be about those types and their actions that likely result in thousand of unlicensed, unpaid for copies of Photoshop circulating around. And no, I have no connection to Adobe, I pay for my software. I don’t like the activation, but I understand the reason for it, and I can live with, in fact I have for some while with no problems.
Steve
April 12th, 2005 at 7:34 pm
–>You don’t make your position clear.
I made my position very clear. Did you read the piece? Already you misread the part about the upgrade…
–>I wanted people to understand you are not objective on this issue. You have friends and a solid financial connection to Adobe, maybe you would like to say the activation scheme is dumb, but you can’t because you might offend somebody you know. Who knows, what is clear is you are not objective.
Who would that be? I’ve never received a penny from Adobe in 15 years of using their products. I don’t own Adobe stock.
–>I was not talking about selling Photoshop, but the machine on which Adobe products are installed.
Deactivate and remove. Who sells a machine with software on it to other people? That’s not legal.
–>Adobe make no commitments in their license agreements with regard to activation. You do not cover this. Nor do you point out that many other companies work just fine without complicated license schemes.
What would you like them to tell you? So all software products should have no license schemes? I wonder how long they would stay in business if they had the customer base of Adobe (and all the people who steal from them).
–>Your perspective focuses purely on the fact that anybody that installs 5 copies of photoshop is a thief.
IF they have purchased one license with CS2 or CS, or version 7 etc and you install 5 copies you are a thief. That’s not what you agreed to. That’s not what you’re allowed to do.
–>You can not conceive of the reasons people would need to install 4 5 10 copies without paying 650 (old price, 599.00 new price) for each copy.
No, for each copy you get two installs. You can also buy a site license for 5 or more copies IF you need that. So you need two Hasselbald 150mm lens, you pay for two lenses even if you only use one at a time. What’s the difference?
–>Neither Adobe nor you can conceive of the ways this will trip people up, and when you find out it does, you will write it off as an aberration, as just one guy and continue on your way.
I don’t need to convince anyone. You either abide by the rules you agree to or stick with CS. Doesn’t matter to me one bit. Like I said, I abide by the agreements I make.
–>You make fun of and try to tar those with a view opposing this scheme as criminals without even a nod to the very real problems that have already been experienced, nor do you acknowledge that as Adobe grows more powerful the potential this scheme creates for the abuse of that power.
By the letter of the law they are most certainly criminals. No one put a gun to their head to use this product. They have to agree to an EULA. All Adobe is done is make sure you’re good to your word. If you’re used to stealing software, I can imagine why you’d be pissed off. God forbid someone steal something of yours, you’d certainly have a hissy fit. But a big company like Adobe, that’s OK in your book?
–>Your comments and support of this scheme along with the same dubious intellectual property arguments are all over the net.
I’m popular. Oh, I’m right too…
–>Yet not a single mention of the hundreds of people that have reported problems with the activation scheme.
I don’t personally know anyone who has had such a problem. I can lie and write that hundreds of people have had problems with an old activation scheme if that makes you feel better. I can only tell you my personal experiences using the beta (actually I did so maybe you missed that as well). Sorry but the use of Activation during the beta process didn’t produce a single hiccup.
–>Some who lost their license to CS products altogether and in order to continue working, in order to continue doing business had to buy new copies. You don’t think being deprived of the ability to work is a violation of a users rights?
I don’t know this being the case. Should I be pissed at Hasselbald that their lens break when I drop them on cement? You know the old saying, shit happens.
–>I think they had other options.
Sure, dongles, match phrases, DNA analysis. That’s pretty immaterial to the discussion of what we now have.
–>It is a well known fact that people have a sense for a fair price for a product. They also have an innate sense of fair use. Adobe know this too. That is why they price upgrades at 149.00. Cos they know that is a price people will pay.
And that’s a problem because? So Adobe sucks because they expect you to be honest and honor the EULA they enforce and they suck because they offer their customers a real reasonable upgrade? I fail to see your point.
–>Well why not price a license for Photoshop CS at 149.00, then for 600USD I could get 4 licenses, 650 I could get five. Instead I only get two. And those two can only be used by me. Adobe simply have no incentive to do so. And they never will with people like yourself taking their side without thinking it through.
I have no idea, why don’t you ask an accounts. What’s it got to do with activation? Either the price is something you’re willing to pay or it’s not. If not, don’t buy it. Why not sell 5 copies for a buck ninety five? Why not give away dinner plates to those why buy 2 copies? Gee, why not have no EULA, sell one copy for $600 and let anyone you want copy it onto their hard drives? Next you’ll tell me you’re such a special customer, Adobe should pay YOU to install the software.
April 12th, 2005 at 11:30 pm
I have seen you argue this before and you are doing to me what you did to everybody else i.e. inject stuff I did not say. Here is a perfect example can you see it?
I said..
“Many people will format the drive and that will in MANY, not all cases render the activation/deactivation process useless.”
You responded…
“Deactivate and remove. Who sells a machine with software on it to other people? That’s not legal.”
Did I suggest anything illegal? No. But that is how you need it to be. You can’t think about it any other way. You have a mantra and you will continue to repeat it getting ruder and ruder as you go, as you have before. So rather than try and get you to think outside your box I’ll get on with life. Good luck in your endeavors.
April 13th, 2005 at 1:58 am
-–>You can not conceive of the reasons people would need to install 4 5 10 copies without paying 650 (old price, 599.00 new price) for each copy.
-> No, for each copy you get two installs. You can also buy a site license for 5 or more copies IF you need that. So you need two Hasselbald 150mm lens, you pay for two lenses even if you only use one at a time. What’s the difference?
One is a product, one is a license. If I have a product (eg a camera), I can either have one copy of it and take it everywhere with me unrestricted, OR buy more than one and maybe leave one at home or take two with me and possibly use both at the same time.
With CS I am only allowed to use it in two locations (eg, my desktop and my laptop) and even then, I can’t use it on the two machines at the same time (which is reasonable). What I don’t understand is why I can’t install on my two desktops and my laptop. I’m only ever using one instance of the license at a time (which I think is reasonable expectation of the purchase). Once more, if we have the concept of transferring the active license between machines, why am I effectively limited to the two machines I first install it on (obviously that isn’t absolute but it’s the intention)?
If I purchase a license shouldn’t it follow me where ever I go – especially if there is a concept of disabling and enabling each installed instance so you can only ever use it in one location/machine at a time?
To me, it’s the same as Canon suggesting that if I pay for one of their cameras I’m only allowed to use it in two nominated locations – maybe the studio and home – and they have to authorise me move it between those locations. If I want to use it anywhere other than those two locations I have to buy another camera, regardless of the reason I might want to use the camera in a location other than those two; regardless of whether or not I paid to use that camera and disregarding the fact I can by nature only ever use it in one location at any point time anyway.
PS: I don’t make any money from my use of photoshop, but I still own photoshop because it’s the best tool for my hobby. For me forking out what is over $1000 AUD for another copy of photoshop when I have three computers and I can only ever use it on one machine at a time anyway is silly.
April 13th, 2005 at 8:00 am
–>One is a product, one is a license.
And here is where the debate should concentrate. I don’t see a difference. A piece of software isn’t a tangible product like a camera lens. In fact, once you install it, you could destroy the only tangible product (the box and CD) if you were so inclined and the product is stuff functional on your computer as bits and bytes. We have software licenses for this reason because without them, you could of course have as many copies as you have time to copy to other pieces of tangible property (a computer).
Imagine you have a photo on a site that sells it but there are absolutely no license in place and anyone can download and use it for an ad. There is the tangible photo that ends up on a magazine cover but that’s a bit too late if you didn’t get paid for the use of the photo (license).
It’s shocking to me that by and large the one group up in arms about Adobe licensing is the same group that licenses their images.
Software, like photo’s has to have a license and that license needs to be enforced because like photography, people steal non-tangible items like photo usage and software usage.
April 13th, 2005 at 1:54 pm
As an aside, I’m curious how the prior activation of the PC version affected sales. Ditto with the recent addition of the Mac version. Did sales go up significantly as those with illegal copies were forced to purchase a legit license to update, or did sales stay level because those with illegal copies refused to update. Probably somewhere in the middle. Still curious, though.
Chuck
April 13th, 2005 at 2:36 pm
Brad, you can actually have Photoshop installed on many machines at once. Just activated on two at a time. Moving an activation around is fairly quick and painless. You do have to remember to do it, but until we all have GPS tracker chips installed…
Pat, if you reformat the hard drive and re-install everything, the machine ID will still be the same, and re-activating in that case does not cause a problem.
And if you feel the product isn’t worth the price, don’t buy it. Photoshop is larger, deeper, more complex, and far less buggy than anything comparable. It’s created by a dedicated team with a tremendous customer focus who sweat out details to allow our users to get more done.
April 13th, 2005 at 4:16 pm
Byer
If you – properly – reformat the hard drive or install boot magic or many other applications that just love that first track, the activation will be broken. If you have a disk fail. That will screw things up too. And Adobe specifically make the case that they might not support reactivation in those cases. But things worked OK for you. Great. What percentage of the user base having trouble are you willing to put up with? 0.5% 1% 10% ? Lets pick a number and see if Adobe/you will commit to it. Honest users are going to suffer and in my mind if one person that is legally entitled to use the software has trouble, then the plan is a failure. How did windows work out for you?
Adobe has managed to gobble up most competitive apps and has enjoyed free publicity via ‘casual copying’ for many years. Now they have a lock on the market and growth is slowing they are going to try and pick pennies in the corners of the market. The fact that they want to do this is fine by me. How they have chosen to do it is wrong. Once competition pops-up they will relax the licensing scheme and reduce pricing substantially, until then with the help of people like Mr. Rodney they will take advantage of their – market dominance – customers a little.
Thanks for the insight on Adobe and the Photoshop team, but I have a pretty good handle on Adobe and what goes into these decisions. Thanks.
April 13th, 2005 at 4:17 pm
Jeff asked me to cross-post a response I wrote on Rob Galbraith’s site, so here it is:
I know there are some out there who are totally anti-Activation. Nothing I say will change those people’s minds, and so it’s not worth the effort. For those willing to read on:
I did push for bumping the license to three. I’ll go back and push some more. It was looked at, I promise you – it was not just dismissed out of hand. It was felt that the addition of easy activation transfer was sufficient.
So, why Activation? And why do I think Photoshop got it, well, closer to correct than others?
Putting out naked bits just doesn’t make sense anymore when you can download them off of Bittorrent in 10 minutes. Yes, you can argue that a crack will appear within a couple of weeks, why does it matter? Because that cracked version is *different* than what’s on the CD. One has no way of verifying it’s the same, doesn’t carry virus or spyware or other malicious payload, and at upgrade time it’s easy to detect. Shoot, the first crack that came out on Windows last time didn’t even let the keyboard shortcuts work. The kids who just want to play around won’t mind risking that, but most people who use Photoshop to generate income aren’t going to take that chance.
The other major source of piracy is casual. Those that probably don’t mean to, or for whom it’s more effort to not be a pirate than to be one. Small shops with 5-10 employees who didn’t want to bother with a (now very easy) volume licensing program that starts at just 5 copies. White box assemblers for whom just imaging a disk over was too easy not to do. Here is where Activation works, and works well.
So why do I think we got Activation more right than others?
Our licensing was already more generous than most, and we’re just enforcing the license – and in a very minimal way at that. You don’t have to re-activate every so often as in other schemes. You can move activations around. And what we consider a “machine change” requiring re-activation is very generous. It takes all of 15 seconds to activate once, at install.
What problems have we seen? Most problems that cause mysterious requests for re-activation are actually system problems that are quite serious. A dead motherboard clock battery that causes the system time to initially be wrong, for example – this can cause problems beyond just the re-activation. We have had a couple of people with bad drivers (on Windows) that caused the machine to crash at shutdown, causing a piece of the activation information to be out of sync – again, a system problem that is quite serious if not corrected.
I would expect the Mac’s greater stability and lower vulnerability to spyware and other software that can affect system behavior to reduce and practically eliminate these instances of unnecessary (but harmless) re-activations.
So, please, before believing all the FUD on Activation, try it. Or talk to someone who has.
For those who have legitimate reasons to need a 3-machine license, argue for that. It is more common now, and it can be re-considered. But think about whether you really would need to do that transfer constantly, or is one of those machines really just “occasional” and you don’t *need* the third activation. I’m not trying to be dismissive here; I just want you to understand that the argument for bumping the number of activated machines to 3 should be pretty solid.
——————–
-Scott
April 13th, 2005 at 4:20 pm
-> Brad, you can actually have Photoshop installed on many machines at once. Just activated on two at a time. Moving an activation around is fairly quick and painless.
Right, if that’s the case then I have no problems with the system. It just wasn’t how I interpreted the license (and how the activation system works).
If what you say is true, doesn’t it negate all the backup laptop issues? Eg. Deactivate your desktop and activate the backup laptop before going out in the field (the primary laptop is already activated). When you return, deactivate the backup laptop and reactivate the desktop.
For those who remember Turbo Pascal you might remember their license. It roughly stated that their software is like a book. It can only be read (nee used) by one person at any one time. This to me makes perfect sense as you are treating a ‘license to use a non-tangible product’ as if you actually ‘purchased a tangible product’.
April 13th, 2005 at 5:40 pm
Byer,
Can activation be tried without paying for it?
Can an activated version of CS2 be placed on an external Firewire/USB hard-drive?
Has any service level agreements/commitments related to activation been added to the EULA?
Thanks.
April 13th, 2005 at 6:02 pm
-> Thanks for the insight on Adobe and the Photoshop team, but I have a pretty good handle on Adobe and what goes into these decisions. Thanks.
I’m sure that you think you do.
I’m also sure that you don’t.
You are bringing up pretty wild scenarios – very, very few people do a low-level format of their drives, ever (folks, formatting from within Windows or OS X doesn’t do a low-level format). And very very few of those do it frequently enough that activation is a problem. And in that rarest of rare cases, it’s a phone call to fix.
As for a boot manager, very, very few users use one anymore – there is vainshingly little reason to anymore. If you still feel a need, just make sure you install that first. Not that hard. Even if you install it afterwards, in most cases it doesn’t not affect activation. You are definitely making assumptions about how it works that don’t apply.
So if even one legitimate user is slightly inconvenienced by activation you consider it a failure? It would be nice if the world were that black and white. This isn’t scraping for pennies, this isn’t shaking down legitimate users. But then I think you already knew that.
So were users inconvenienced by activation on Windows last time around? A few were – very few. And many of those issues have been taken care of this time around. But suffer? That’s an interesting bit of hyperbole.
April 13th, 2005 at 6:04 pm
-> If what you say is true, doesn’t it negate all the backup laptop issues? Eg. Deactivate your desktop and activate the backup laptop before going out in the field (the primary laptop is already activated). When you return, deactivate the backup laptop and reactivate the desktop.
Smart man! Exactly – this works just as you stated. Like a book is a good way of thinking about it.
April 13th, 2005 at 6:17 pm
-> Can activation be tried without paying for it?
I’m not quite sure what you are asking. A try-and-buy version of the application will be made available that will work for 30 days or until activated. To actually get to the point where pushing a button will activate the product requires a serial number, which requires a purchase.
-> Can an activated version of CS2 be placed on an external Firewire/USB hard-drive?
Sure. And it will run on the machine it was activated on. Activation is tagged to the machine, not to the installation directory. To move the drive to another machine and run it from there requires de-activating the first machine and activating the second (though doing that with Windows applications doesn’t really work since the required registry entries and other support files will be missing).
-> Has any service level agreements/commitments related to activation been added to the EULA?
I’m not familiar enough with the EULA to answer this.
April 13th, 2005 at 6:54 pm
Byer,
You said you wanted people to use the activation scheme before they believe what people are saying about it. I was asking if they could do that without paying for a license. If they cannot, are you saying Adobe will refund money to those people that choose not use Adobe products after they have installed and activated?
Have you worked with Symantec on this release of your activation scheme? I noticed that you caveat the use of disk tools in your FAQ. Are you going to be saying that users of PartionMagic and other tools are not required to Activate or are not supported by Adobe?
If a machine has multiple Id’s active will all user id’s be activated? This is another item that has not been covered in the FAQ.
Did you consider passive network check for other running versions of software prior to going with the activation scheme? MS Office does this, so do many other applications. Why did you choose not go this route?
April 13th, 2005 at 8:16 pm
-> If they cannot, are you saying Adobe will refund money to those people that choose not use Adobe products after they have installed and activated?
Yes, as long as they satisfy the rules. See http://www.adobe.com/support/salesdocs/1001707.html;store
It’s one of the more liberal return policies in the industry.
Note that you can view the EULA on http://www.adobe.com as well (do a search for EULA).
-> Have you worked with Symantec on this release of your activation scheme?
No, but we do test with their products. We also test with PartitionMagic. Most PartitionMagic operations do not affect the activation state of the machine.
-> If a machine has multiple Id’s active will all user id’s be activated?
Yes, activation is per machine. Note that the EULA for the standard end-user package only allows for one instance of the app to be running at once.
-> Did you consider passive network check for other running versions of software prior to going with the activation scheme? MS Office does this, so do many other applications. Why did you choose not go this route?
Yes, we considered it. It doesn’t cover the case of the white-box assembler illegally imaging disks for customers at all, and it also is more problematic (remember, we did use such a scheme on OS 9).
The current version of Office and Windows XP do not use this scheme either; they use an activation scheme very similar to Adobe’s. Note that most people don’t have to activate Office or XP if it comes pre-installed, or a volume license is used.
Volume licensing is available for Photoshop as well, starting at just 5 seats.
April 14th, 2005 at 3:00 am
I think your responses are misleading. You have presented honest users with a fait accompli and in return they have received nothing. When activation runs smoothly it runs well, but when it fails the customer has little recourse. From the outset they are treated as if they are being dishonest, and in some cases your support people have ‘reportedly’ denied reactivation.
To support this scheme coming to the Mac people such as Mr. Rodney have been badgering people every time they said a word against your plans and commented on past failures in this area. In addition you have denied and downplayed the problems you have had. A good example in this discussion is Partition Magic. You say “Most PartitionMagic operations do not affect the activation state of the machine.” Well that may be true but since you don’t say which operations do affect the activation state, i stand by what I said, Partition Magic will/did break the scheme on Windows, and you should know that. Furthermore there is no default policy for Adobe to reactivate products and you state clearly that you may well NOT reactivate, in some cases putting the user who paid 600USD or 1000USD for some products in a position where they lose their money.
More and more companies have found that rather than do the hard work of finding and prosecuting pirates it is easier to devise ever more complicated schemes to get traditional users to pay more. This was the reason given by your VP of Anti-piracy for going after ‘casual copiers’, it is easier. Apple devised a family pack. 5 licenses 200USD because they knew that is how households used software and would want to buy. Your volume licensing scheme is unintelligible and none of the retail outlets have multi-packs available for any of your products. [I did not have time to search hard for this, I'll have somebody do that over the next few days, but I could not find anything other than your volume licensing page and as I said that was unintelligible and had no prices.]
You expect users to adhere to your policies and be upstanding individuals and respect Adobe. Yet you have done nothing to provide guarantees to the user. You have made no commitments to your users. The EULA is all about what the customer is legally bound to do for you and says nothing about the commitments Adobe makes to the user. Your FAQ in places reads like a weasels charter, in other places it is great. But make it legal and be clear. Add it to the EULA. Give the user some rights.
Adobe is not alone and the problems with activation are not unique to Adobe. But Adobe is unique in having no apparent competition in many spaces that directly effect the earning potential of whole industries. This places an additional burden on you.
Activation is leading to annual subscription based pricing. Activation fails. YOUR activation fails and in some cases you have not been able to figure out why. And whether Adobe sees it as one instance in one million, the person that is denied the use of his software sees it as one instance and that one instance might be the guys job, a big contract or in some cases their business.
I realize that you were not officially representing Adobe, however I did find your downplaying of the very real issues people have had with your activation scheme(s) nauseating. Maybe you are limited in what you can say, but still. people “suffered”. I have taken time to contact a number of people that complained. I will also contact Adobe for official comment over the coming weeks. I have what I need for my article. Feel free to rebut my comments here, safe in the knowledge that I will not drag this out further, as I said I have what I need.
I appreciate the opportunity offered by PhotoshopNews to have this “debate”.
April 14th, 2005 at 12:02 pm
Wow. How do you respond to someone who wasn’t interested in a real discussion but was just gathering info for a hit piece? Are you going to even cover whether the users that had issues tried to get their money back or talk to a supervisor when they called to re-activate? Why they were even doing things like low-level formats and boot sector wipes? Are you going to even bother to see if activation in the new version solves some of those issues?
Trivializing the impact of piracy and overplaying the impact of activation on a few users who are actively messing with their systems in unsupported ways doesn’t serve any need in a positive way that I can tell. Of course I wish Adobe could get the answer right for each and every case. But no company is ever going to be able to do that, and I think Adobe does better than most. And at some point if users are going to shoot themselves in the foot, there isn’t much you can do to stop them, much as we’d like to.
For the few users who had real activation problems – and I tried to help as many of those as I could on the U2U forums – I believe the activation code in the new release fixes the problems. There will probably still be issues for a few users due to exceedingly rare system issues, and again, we’ll try and help those users on a case-by-case basis.
But piracy is way too big a problem, and activation is the best effective solution that causes the least number of problems that we currently have available to us.
April 14th, 2005 at 3:37 pm
Scott, thanks for your comments, and it’s good to hear from you on this. I’m a Windows user who has not (to this point) had problems with Adobe’s activation in PS CS. Please pardon me if I’ve missed this elsewhere in this thread (I tend to skim the rants), but will Adobe be offering 24/7 phone support for reactivation issues?
Thanks.
April 14th, 2005 at 4:52 pm
It might be useful to apply the old 80/20 rule (see
(log N = log A + m log x) and Photoshop).
80% of the problems come from 20% of the users.
(we suspect it’s an even higher % of problems from an even lower % of users)
In terms of piracy, 80% of the piracy is probably done by 20% of the pirates.
There is no question that piracy is a serious problem for anybody that produces any sort of product based on intellectual property-be they software developers, record companies, film studios or even photographers. The big question is what to do about it.
The US Constitution grants authors the exclusive right to benefit from the results of their intellectual property. In fact, it’s the only “fundamental right” found in the original Constitution–the Bill of Rights was added later. And while you are free to debate the relative merits of one system vs. another system of protection, there should be no question of Adobe’s rights to take steps to protect their intellectual property.
For any “creator” to take issue with Adobe’s rights is the height of hypocrisy. Copyright protection cannot be a “sometimes it’s ok and sometimes it isn’t ok” proposition. To allow that would jeopardize the entire institution of international copyright protection.
If you, as an artist, wish to enjoy the benefits of copyright protection for your work, you cannot deny Adobe’s copyright protection for theirs.
Any comparison of Photoshop, or any other intellectual property, to an item of “tangible property” is therefore flawed from the onset.
April 14th, 2005 at 8:29 pm
Nick, the automated phone activation is 24/7. For the very rare exception case which would require talking to a person, that’s handled by customer care. I’m having trouble finding those hours right now – they’re pretty generous, but I don’t believe it’s 24/7.
April 16th, 2005 at 4:05 am
Scott,
It’s not 24/7 or anything close! In the UK it’s business hours – Monday to Friday 9 am to 5pm.
Adobe would be doing themselves and their customers a BIG favour if they did provide live 24/7 support even it meant that calls would be transferred to another region when their local office is closed.
March 16th, 2006 at 7:38 am
If I purchase a license shouldn’t it follow me where ever I go – especially if there is a concept of disabling and enabling each installed instance so you can only ever use it in one location/machine at a time?
April 29th, 2006 at 4:28 am
Many people will format the drive and that will in MANY, not all cases render the activation/deactivation process useless. Adobe make it clear that they intend to operate on a basis of no trust, and by default will not honor activation where an deactivation has not been done.
May 9th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
backgammon
May 11th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
A little off topic – I will soon buy a new desktop.
If I use “add/remove programs” to uninstall from old PC, will it communicate with Adobe and give me back one installation?
I asked this of Adobe tech support and they sent me a link which Adobe’s server says “does not exist”.
Thanks. – David
May 20th, 2006 at 3:18 am
Adobe would be doing themselves and their customers a BIG favour if they did provide live 24/7 support even it meant that calls would be transferred to another region when their local office is closed.