Monday's
free Photoshop offer
was not technically free, but it is still available to anyone
capable of
clicking a link
. On Adobe's (NASDAQ:
ADBE
)
forum page
, the Community Administrator stated the following:
"Effective December 13, Adobe disabled the activation server for
CS2 products and Acrobat 7 because of a technical glitch. These
products were released over 7 years ago and do not run on many
modern operating systems. But to ensure that any customers
activating those old versions can continue to use their software,
we issued a serial number directly to those customers. While this
might be interpreted as Adobe giving away software for free, we did
it to help our customers."
Forum members quickly noted that this was a rather soft denial
of the company's suspected giveaway, particularly because the
download page is still active.
Dov Isaacs, Adobe's
Principal Scientist
, chimed in with the following comments:
"You have heard wrong!" he wrote in a forum post. "Adobe is
absolutely not providing free copies of CS2!
"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.
(Special serial numbers are provided on the page for each product
download.) See
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1114930
.
"You are only legally entitled to download and install with that
serial number if you have a valid license to the product!"
Isaacs paints a significantly different picture from Adobe's
Community Administrator. While the administrator merely said that
users may have "interpreted" the
download links
as being an opportunity to download the software for "free," Isaacs
plainly states that users are not allowed to download and install
the programs unless they already own them.
This is a contradictory response that will only serve to enhance
the confusion surrounding Adobe's decision.
Tech companies do not typically allow consumers to easily
download things they do not want them to have, but that is exactly
what Adobe is doing with CS2. That download link -- the one that
has
popped up everywhere
-- is
still active
.
If Adobe does not want consumers to download CS2 without a valid
license, then it needs to lock the download page and make a formal
announcement explaining why. The company cannot simply rely on
questionable forum posts to tell consumers that they do not have
the right to download something that appears to be available to
everyone.
At the very least Adobe could have placed a notice on the CS2
download page. The company could have
published a press release
. Adobe has not done either of those things.
Instead, the Photoshop maker has dropped the forbidden fruit
right in the middle of the World Wide Web. If Isaacs' words
represent the entire firm, Adobe might think that it has the right
to take legal action against those who download CS2 -- a product
that the company no longer sells.
Follow me
@LouisBedigianBZ
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