ADOBE sued, finally

[wiltw]

Another big issue being on-line CC with them, is Adobe's new terms of service apparently allows them to use your photos and data to teach their computers and program machine learning (AI). Either you agree or they cancel their service and lose access to your data. There's no way to opt out.

Apparently, according to sources, even Adobe employees had expressed how the Adobe practices were alienating its customers, and all of the negative press (and web postings) caused Adobe to backpedal and issue a statement about non-use of customer images for AI

Adobe's Employees Are Just As Upset at the Company As Its Users: Report

"The general perception is: Adobe is an evil company that will do whatever it takes to F its users."

petapixel.com

Adobe forced to backpedal on users' image rights for AI usage - Capture magazine

Adobe wants to make clear it won't use customers images to train AI unless given consent.

www.capturemag.com.au

 

[wiltw]

"Apparently." Will you quote the part of the terms that state this use of your photos?

This is what sparked the controversy, according to this article... https://mashable.com/article/adobe-users-outaged-new-policy-trains-ai-their-work

"Users of various Adobe apps including Photoshop and Substance Painter received a pop-up notice on Wednesday saying "we may access your content through both manual and automated methods, such as for content review."​

​

...click the embedded link ('popup notice'} within the quoted article, and see what happens when you do not click on 'Agree and continue'

 

[brbo]

Here you go, please. Starting from 0:45

Don't believe everything you hear on internet.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

Don't believe everything you hear on internet.

Sure thing, bro. But when you choose to do so, use your powers of deduction, peer review and education while at it.
I'm not taking this at face value. See links to sources posted by others. They're on the web too.

Please approach them with the same rigor.

 

[brbo]

Please approach them with the same rigor.

There is absolutely NO evidence that Adobe is scrapping you local hard drive, analysing you private images and sending data to their servers. I repeat, there is no evidence of what this click hungry dude on a verge of a nervous breakdown is saying. It would be very easy to identify such processes running on your computer, but he remains just-talk-no-show for the whole time which I'm never getting back.

BTW, Adobe clarified for those that have trouble reading that the disturbing text applied only to the images that you publish on their Cloud services. And you can opt out of that too if you don't want AI training on your published images.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

this click hungry dude on a verge of a nervous breakdown

Or someone who has worked his due time in repair industry and is sharing his expertise from day 1 in extreme detail (educating fellow technicians), and gotten sick to the bone from corpo behavior and overreach over these years, and has stepped on warpath with real life consequences, doing his work also at law making processes and congress sittings for the causes of Right to Repair; Keeping ownership an Ownership and Privacy - private. This might be one of such consequences and his voice is needed in this day and age.

It's easy to be a blame thrower, it's a tad harder to isolate what you're disliking and focusing on points one's making. The evidence you're after is quite directly provided by their updated TOS screen that were all about legalizing their behavior. These TOS are going to be altered to the benefit of customer ONLY BECAUSE OF ACTIONS OF MEN LIKE LOUIS

I'm not preaching, just stating some very obvious facts and my frustration towards people defending shitty and faceless corporations out there to extract all the money there's to be extracted (the sudden subscription model replacing standalone releases speaks volumes on itself).


EDIT:
Don't like the dude? Just pay attention to the articles linked by others talking exactly the same except with less of a bite.

 

[brbo]

I still think you need to calm down and read what TOS actually say. Not what some dude thinks and with zero evidence to back up what he believes is going on.

I can understand your dislike for big corporations, but Adobe's subscription only model actually helped a lot of new and old players to finally have a chance to look like an attractive option.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

I'm super calm and in my calmness I'm stating what I have to state, and I un-generalize generalizations made.

If you deemed the "proposed" (violently and unskippably by Adobe) TOS a-okay, then why are so many people against, why is Adobe backstepping now from their "perfectly legal", evidence-free actions and intent to greenlight this via TOS update after sale? Why FTC involvement, lawsuit (about subscription cancelling loops, hidden fees)? Are we exaggerating or are people like you too normalized to it, too accustomed to rape in broad daylight? I truly cannot understand this

In law the intent matters - you often don't have to reach the evidence stage to see what the intent is. When caught and visibly backstepping - that speaks volumes, no evidence really needed.

 

[brbo]

If you deemed the "proposed" (violently and unskippably by Adobe) TOS a-okay, then why are so many people against,

Because they are functionally illiterate?

why is Adobe backstepping now from their "perfectly legal", evidence-free actions and intent to greenlight this via TOS update after sale?

They are not. They are clarifying what TOS state.

Why FTC involvement, lawsuit? Are we exaggerating or are people like you too normalized to it, too accustomed to rape in broad daylight?

FTC and US gov case against Adobe has absolutely nothing to do with Adobe (not) scrapping your private images. It's to do with cancelling the subscription to their services.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

Because they are functionally illiterate?

Or maybe the trust is eroded because of dirty actions by enterprises like Adobe? Thus the public response is well educated and correct, especially in the light of one Adobe controversy running parallel with another.

They are not. They are clarifying what TOS state.

Only if you trust them. I see this as nothing but damage control with all the language of Damage Control involved. Making empty promises won't cut it anymore, public seems to question everything now and rightfully so, and the damage has been done. I remind you of that unskippable screen that constitutes legal action when closed: you had to give them access to cancel it later, isn't that at least backwards?

FTC and US gov case against Adobe has absolutely nothing to do with Adobe (not) scrapping your private images.

Agreed. But controversies running parallel sure do compliment Adobe.

 

[brbo]

Or maybe the trust is eroded because of dirty actions by enterprises like Adobe? Thus the public response is well educated and correct, especially in the light of one Adobe controversy running parallel with another.

I don't know how a public response can be educated and correct when those claims (that Adobe is scanning and analysing your local private images) are backed by absolutely zero evidence? Just because you don't agree with how some company goes about their business doesn't mean you should trust somebody that also doesn't like that company and is flat out lying to you... But, that's just me, you do you, of course.

I would actually welcome people switch to something else than Adobe as that would probably mean that those alternatives would have more resources to develop features that are missing or lacking. At the same time I'm fully aware that those alternatives might be better, just as bad or even worse in handling matters that I or others have issues with.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

I don't know how a public response can be educated and correct when those claims (that Adobe is scanning and analysing your local private images) are backed by absolutely zero evidence?

It's the correct response to refute such TOS, not to accept such overreach blindly, but to raise hell for putting users against the wall.

I won't accept for a moment that this is just a coding error, a bug. Or a "legalese slipping through the cracks", knowing that legalese are constructed with words that carry meaning and intent - nobody is paying lawyers to construct shit by accident, unknowingly.

Absence of a button is simple and intentional behavior, in line with FTC lawsuit to be honest.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

When I'm writing TOS for computer resources at my school, I bounce my work off of various people, asking how that reads to end user and make corrections before 1) publishing my TOS, 2) and certainly 3 times before putting users against the wall.

If I can do it alone, I expect the same from an entity witth paid employees doing just this, not many things in parallel.

TOS express intent, they aren't accidental whatsoever AND are legally binding.

 

[brbo]

You do know that the TOS have been like that "forever" and the changes that are raising hell now were purely cosmetic (may vs. will, sexual vs. pornographic)? And the overreach hasn't been there neither before nor now?

Just shows how little you should trust your guy to tell you the truth (he might even not be misleading you intentionally, maybe he just isn't equipped to understand the matter or he just needed to jump on the bandwagon before he had the time to read a few paragraphs, I understand you can miss on a lot of clicks if you actually waste your time researching what you are talking about).

So, I'd encourage you to actually read yourself about the changes that were made.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

No, I don't know if that's true or not - reading endless TOS full of "writing in small font" isn't entertaining even to me.

But AI is the variable here and is quite novel, so I'll just let that lawsuit (and this controversy) speak for itself as I've said all there's to be said about this from my point of view

 

[VinceInMT]

The subscription model is all around us these days. In my city of about 100K, we have had a dozen new car washes open up in the past 2-3 years and they all have this model. I wash mine by hand so I don’t know what is involved should one want to cancel.

Our local newspaper, like most, uses this model, and when we decided to drop it after years of subscribing, they made it very difficult to do so. Once we did we got a bill for past “special editions” that we received. These ”specials” included the Black Friday editions. We called and complained but they said that if you don’t subscribe you have to pay extra for those editions. We explained that we WERE subscribed when we received them but they explained that since we were no longer subscribers we had to pay for them. WTF? We went round and and round over a few months and they finally gave up.

 

[warden]

Because you don't own anything via subscription, because you're at the mercy of their ever shifting business practices and human data trafficking.

When your subscription or their service inevitably ends, you have nothing to show for it, the money is gone with the wind. When you buy a software, you can use it decades later if need be and nobody but you have access to your data and say over it. Permanently.

If that's OK with you, then it's OK. But for many of us this is a no-go. And taken together with recent big corpo behavior, it's a even harder no-no.

Why should standalone software with rare update frequency be subscription, is it to the benefit of customer, this lack of control even over your own data stored on their cloud?
If so, where's my standalone/offline version of many of these services/products to choose?

That’s a good summary of the side that dislikes subscription services for software.

A better PR solution for Adobe would be to continue with the subscription service for those who like it (like me) but also offer stand-alone products for the going rate (say $2-3K per each software title or thereabouts). Most people wouldn’t need to update the current versions for a decade and paying now might be more appealing to them while still allowing profit for Adobe.

A challenge with that is their tools now use AI that is constantly changing and becoming core to the products. I’m not sure how Adobe could handle that complexity without removing all AI features from the non-subscription customers which would be a turn-off for most.

 

[Hassasin]

There is absolutely NO evidence that Adobe is scrapping you local hard drive, analysing you private images and sending data to their servers. I repeat, there is no evidence of what this click hungry dude on a verge of a nervous breakdown is saying. It would be very easy to identify such processes running on your computer, but he remains just-talk-no-show for the whole time which I'm never getting back.

BTW, Adobe clarified for those that have trouble reading that the disturbing text applied only to the images that you publish on their Cloud services. And you can opt out of that too if you don't want AI training on your published images.

Sounds like you trust Adobe but nobody who says otherwise. Nothing that I would subscribe to.

 

[Bushcat]

I thought I would use PS and LR more than I did, as it turns out I kept returning to my old version of Corel Paint and Aftershot as I know it's in and out, and like others I tend to just adjust, seldom do I use any of creative features.

We bumped into an interesting thing with Corel Video in our local market: it included Japanese-language subtitling software which was something like 12 times the price if bought separately. A no-brainer, in our case.

 

[loccdor]

Well, I'm glad that I never paid to use Photoshop.

 

[brbo]

Sounds like you trust Adobe but nobody who says otherwise. Nothing that I would subscribe to.

I argued that there are millions of installations of Adobe software, yet nobody ever produced proof that Adobe is scanning/analysing and uploading details of your local private images.

And your take from that is that I only trust Adobe and nobody else? Wow.

 

[Hassasin]

It's perplexing to me that some posts indicate no understanding of why subscription schemes came to be. If one can't see anything but greed, perpetual money drain, all part of some social experiment how far it can be taken, then you are free to do so. But strong arguments for it seem rather based on vested interest in doing so and not much substance. But I know not everyone has trouble being restricted, stuck in an enclosure, and become irritated when others disagree.

This is not same as saying nobody can actually see some value in return, except that supposed value is largely based on false economy and acceptance of possible (in fact downright rejection of) breach of private data, regardless of what official statements imply.

Since I've not gone sub, I've actually had no idea Adobe took pages from FB and made it hard to quit.

 

[Hassasin]

you can check out
but you can never leave?

The only way I managed to quit was thanks to a dedicated blog from a guy who figured it out and described warning signs, some totally silent. This was some 12 years ago so I don't know how hard it is today.

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

IBM had a history of 'renting' software and hardware. Of course, it got them in deep doo-doo: IBM 1956 Consent Decree

Since then IBM seems to be on good (or at least much better) behavior. May the same fate befall Adobe.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

It's perplexing to me that some posts indicate no understanding of why subscription schemes came to be. If one can't see anything but greed, perpetual money drain, all part of some social experiment how far it can be taken, then you are free to do so. But strong arguments for it seem rather based on vested interest in doing so and not much substance. But I know not everyone has trouble being restricted, stuck in an enclosure, and become irritated when others disagree.

This is not same as saying nobody can actually see some value in return, except that supposed value is largely based on false economy and acceptance of possible (in fact downright rejection of) breach of private data, regardless of what official statements imply.

Since I've not gone sub, I've actually had no idea Adobe took pages from FB and made it hard to quit.

When Adobe went subscription model, they increase their profits multifold. Someone's paying for those profits. And that's their customers. Subscription model is not cheaper, otherwise they wouldn't have it. They use subscription models to maximize their profits, and a lot of other companies have jumped on the same bandwagon.