Photoshop CC Pirated in One Day

[RFPhotography]

http://fstoppers.com/adobe-photoshop-cc-has-already-been-pirated-in-just-one-day

Too funny.

[BernardLanguillier]

http://fstoppers.com/adobe-photoshop-cc-has-already-been-pirated-in-just-one-day

Too funny.

The only question was whether it would take one day or two. The piracy argument was one of the many false excuses Adobe evangelists were advised to spread around to try to justify the CC model. Few people really believed it to be credible at all.

Cheers,
Bernard

[kaelaria]

I don't condone it but I'm happy to see the fresh mud in their eye for being so greedy.

[hjulenissen]

History shows that one cannot practically stop pirating.

What is possible, is to motivate as many as possible to purchase your product.
*Make a good product, sell it on "fair" terms and many will feel obliged to pay for it. Many people actually realize that software developers needs to pay their rent, and that their money contribute to enable those products that they want.
*Make the updates frequent, and whatever the hassle of pirating it will be multiplied by the number of updates needed/wanted (assuming that the update mechanism does not automatically work for pirated versions)
*Make sure that whatever copy protection mechanism is used, legal customers will never feel that they get an inferior product compared to the pirates (you say what? My legal Bluray disk won't play on my PC because I have no "secure" HDMI DRM-ified connection? But... this Bluray rip from TPB works without a hitch?)

Sadly, it seems that some software companies (or at least their PR people and some of their actions) rather would like to minimize the number of pirates than maximize their profit. That is easy, make a lousy product and very few people will pirate it. Now, what happened to your stock?

-h

[BernardLanguillier]

History shows that one cannot practically stop pirating.

What is possible, is to motivate as many as possible to purchase your product.
*Make a good product, sell it on "fair" terms and many will feel obliged to pay for it. Many people actually realize that software developers needs to pay their rent, and that their money contribute to enable those products that they want.
*Make the updates frequent, and whatever the hassle of pirating it will be multiplied by the number of updates needed/wanted (assuming that the update mechanism does not automatically work for pirated versions)
*Make sure that whatever copy protection mechanism is used, legal customers will never feel that they get an inferior product compared to the pirates (you say what? My legal Bluray disk won't play on my PC because I have no "secure" HDMI DRM-ified connection? But... this Bluray rip from TPB works without a hitch?)

Sadly, it seems that some software companies (or at least their PR people and some of their actions) rather would like to minimize the number of pirates than maximize their profit. That is easy, make a lousy product and very few people will pirate it. Now, what happened to your stock?

-h

This supreme irony of the pirated version offering a better user experience will in fact apply to CC since you are probably not going to need an internet connection, nor run into a risk of not being able to edit your files from a given date...

The pirated version of CC appears to be the closest thing to CS7.

Yet, I will of course not touch it, but it becomes difficult not to see CC as being a formidable encouragement of piracy.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Rob C]

I think it's a matter of pricing.

There's much anger and angst in Europe (probably elsewhere, too) about the relative costs of PS (non-cloud) compared with buyers in the US.  That it could all be bought online, years ago, eradicated all the possible excuses about local distributors etc. and made the entire purchasing operation appear a gouge. You simply can't justify huge price differences when there's but a mouse-click of distance between dispatch and receipt.

Piracy can stem from inability to pay as well as from reluctance to pay; make the product around the price of Nikon's NX2, for example, and it doesn't feel too heavy a toll. In both cases you can't do what you have to do without them, but the feeling's different because of the price level.

Harking back to the fact that I can do perfectly well with my old PS6 doesn't mean that I would then become a lost future customer to Adobe. Offer things such as correction of verticals as an additional, downloadable extra, for example, and I think many of us impecunious folks would gladly pay a few dollars for the pleasure. Even PS6 seems to have so many facilities that I never need... fine-tuning the possibilities to the user's needs is key, I think, not selling him a huge animal that lies asleep in the kennel all day long.

The pro photographer, apparently, never drove the camera/ film markets; it was amateur led. Pricing PS so that it only makes sense to the top echelon of snappers is cutting out a huge base of smaller buyers. And yes, owning is better than not owning.

Rob C

[kers]

Learning photoshop took me one year. It is not an easy program to understand well.
The pirated versions are good for learning without being hold back by the substantial costs.
So i think Photoshop also could grew so big because of these pirated free versions.
Now with the CC subscription model - you think twice. If you want to use it later you will need to be paying forever to Adobe.
That would hold some back from trying to get into it. Possibly they will loose a lot of new students because of the CC model;  
then they also risk that people are not be willing to step over from the pirated to the payed CC version.
…and more and more people are fine with just using Lightroom.
The learning curve, the costs and now the subscription model are making it less appealing to get into it.

[kaelaria]

I would also wager all the training companies and sites grew almost exclusively because of the pirated versions.  If you think for one seconds more than a few percent of the 'new shooters' are investing the big bucks in purchasing, you are on another planet.  Digital Rebel/kit lens, free website/facebook page and pirated PS from your friend - you're a photographer   and that's not a joke.

[Vladimirovich]

So i think Photoshop also could grew so big because of these pirated free versions.

no, because it was better and because there were "pirated free versions"... remember competition also got their products "pirated" and there is also a free software... however once everything is available for free and yet Photoshop wins that means only that it is still better then the rest of the pack all things considered.

[Vladimirovich]

I would also wager all the training companies and sites grew almost exclusively because of the pirated versions. 

training materials (video/book) are also pirated... so if somebody got "pirated" photoshop, he/she will get "pirated" training materials the same way...

[nemo295]

I'm not surprised that CC has been cracked, but I'm a little surprised that it happened so quickly.

Of course the hacking community was going to be all over this thing. There was never any doubt that it would happen sooner or later.

And I'm also quite sure that Adobe expected it as well. Although they've always claimed that one of the big reasons for moving to a subscription model was to make their software less susceptible to piracy, I never believed them. CC was purely a money grab from the beginning. Sure there's always been lots of piracy of Adobe's products, but I don't believe that it accounted for a significant loss of sales to potential customers. The bulk of the piracy was being committed by people who never would have bought the software anyway.

[RSL]

The details are a bit fuzzy to me now, but back in the eighties the feds spent millions on development of an unbreakable code that everyone was to use to encrypt their emails. Once the system was released, a couple college students broke the encryption system in about two days.

I've been involved in microcomputer software development since early 1977. I was around when Bill Gates bought QDOS from Tim Patterson and turned it into DOS for IBM, and MSDOS for Microsoft. I suspect Bill wouldn't have made as many billions as he made if he hadn't, essentially, ignored the fact that people were stealing MSDOS wholesale. I had a friend, now deceased, who had a business assembling and selling microcomputers with MSDOS on them. As far as I know he only paid for one copy of MSDOS. He wasn't the only one doing it, but Microsoft wasn't going out of its way to enforce its copyright. One reason was CP/M (Control Program/Microcomputer) that Gary Kildall was selling. CP/M was a competitor, and a much better piece of software then DOS. Early versions of Windows also were mostly bootleg copies. Until Windows NT came along Windows was simply an interpreter that sat on top of DOS, and Microsoft needed lots of Windows systems out there so they could sell Microsoft Word, Microsoft Office, and the other inflated products that took advantage of DOS. Once NT, which actually was an operating system, came along though, Microsoft started paying close attention to copyright.

There are some advantages in not getting too uptight about copyright.

[BernardLanguillier]

If Adobe ever were to undergo a class suit action built on the proposition that PS is a de facto platform for image edition, I wonder if the millions of pirated copies of CS/CC would be counted. :-)

Would Adobe be seen as having encouraged piracy of their software in order to reinforce their dominant position?

Cheers,
Bernard

[louoates]

Thou shall not steal.

[nemo295]

Thou shall not steal.

I agree completely. On the other hand, I don't feel sorry for Adobe at all.

[Rob C]

I agree completely. On the other hand, I don't feel sorry for Adobe at all.

What you have done, Doug, is underline what amounts to natural justice and balance.

There's a sort of spiritual equilibrium at work here - a balance between reward and exploitation.

Rob C

[mondeo]

Adobe's approach is the blame the pirate's and subsequently put the price up.
If they didnt put any effort into increasing the protection (and it looks like they didnt as the same mechanism is used) then they weren't expecting to stop the pirates.

Result is they move to a more dependable income stream where they dont have to put in as much effort to new features (which is increasingly harder for a mature product).

The monthly charging structure does make it easier for those who previously pirated copies because they couldnt cough up the full price but I dont suspect this is a very large percentage.

Whether or not you see it as theft or not there are a significant proportion of people would wouldnt dream of stealing a laptop from a store but would use a pirated copy of s/w, music or video. Straight fact of life

[Isaac]

... but would use a pirated copy of s/w, music or video.

... a photo.

[Rob C]

... a photo.

Ironic if a photo produced via pirated PS!

Rob C

[mondeo]

I dont think most 'normall pirates' actually pirate photo's. Granted there are those that use photos for their web sites but compared to significant percentage of say 14 to 24 year old that download music and films the loss to industry through s/w pirates must be very very small.

I think most photo pirates are commercial operations that chance their arms. They tend then to remove the images or pay up to some extent.

I am not saying the impact to those that have their images pirated is not significant. But if I had some of mine pirated and then compared this to the impact of having my laptop, phone or bike pinched then I know which would hurt me more.

The music and film industry are the big losers as the pirates are likely to have purchased some of the product otherwise.

Adobe exist in a world that includes pirates, they choose not to invest any more in stoping this because they realise that doing this wont actually increase their revenue or profits. The effort would actually reduce profit because they have to pay engineers to develop the code to they would otherwise not need