Adobe Creative Cloud Terms of Use

[Andrew Kimery]

Those terms aren’t very unique or surprising are they? All companies reserve the right to change things w/o notice. Google, Amazon and Apple reserve the right to remove content (including paid content) acquired from their stores from users’ devices. No one guarantees 100% reliability, especially when it comes to cloud-based services where there are so many potential points of failure like 3rd party hosting services, internet backbones, ISPs, last mile, end user problems, etc.,. Should Adobe really be liable if a storm on the East Coat knocks out Amazon’s servers which means a guy in LA can’t access his CC online storage? If you read the EULAs for Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive, iCould, etc, they all state they are not liable for service reliability and are not liable for any lost or damaged files.

I’m sure if we went through the EULAs and ToS agreements for all of our commonly used software and services wer’d finally similarly scary sounding language.

[David Lawrence]

[Andrew Kimery] “Those terms aren’t very unique or surprising are they? All companies reserve the right to change things w/o notice.”

Of course. But what got my attention was this line:

19.3 Termination or Suspension of Services. Adobe may also terminate or suspend all or a portion of your account and/or access to the Services for any reason (subject to Additional Terms for certain Services). Except as may be set forth in any Additional Terms applicable to a particular Service, termination of your account may include: (a) removal of access to all offerings within the Services; (b) deletion of Your Content and Account Information, including your personal information, log-in ID and password, and all related information, files, and Materials associated with or inside your account (or any part thereof); and (c) barring of further use of the Services.

These terms also apply to access to any work produced with these services.

Are you comfortable with that? I’m not.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl

[Frank Gothmann]

If the content is sitting on their servers and not your local drive, what else are they supposed to do with it? They’ll give you a grace period to download it and then delete it. Same would apply to your website if you cancel your hosting with them.

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“You also agree that you will not use these products for… the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.”
iTunes End User Licence Agreement

[David Lawrence]

[Frank Gothmann] “If the content is sitting on their servers and not your local drive, what else are they supposed to do with it? They’ll give you a grace period to download it and then delete it. Same would apply to your website if you cancel your hosting with them.”

You’re missing the point. If they decide to terminate your service or ban you from membership (which these terms allow them to do at any time for any reason) you will not be able to open any of the files on your hard drive created with their service, because the software that opens them will not run.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl

[Sandeep Sajeev]

These things are always pretty disturbing to read.

When I started out on my own a few years ago and signed my first production contract with JWT, I thought the Terms had been drawn up with the sole intention of screwing me over at any moment of their choosing.

I guess at some point you have to trust that if you keep your end of the bargain, the other party will keep theirs.

[Frank Gothmann]

The project files, yes. An avi or mov or tiff or png or whatever you create will open just fine in any other application.
But yeah, your project files won’t open because the apps that created them won’t open. But… I mean… how else is that supposed to work? You stop paying and the apps still work?
As I have said, I would prefer a one-payment upgrade as well but there is nothing here that is surprising or unusual within the concept of a subscription model.

——
“You also agree that you will not use these products for… the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.”
iTunes End User Licence Agreement

[Jeremy Garchow]

David-

Is there any pro level software that you pay for and use that has a terms of service that does not absolve the creating company from change?

I am generally curious as it seems impossible to me.

If I took to heart every terms agreement, I would suffer serious injury from simply turning on my shop vac.

I’m all for equal rights, but I can’t imagine Adobe writing terms where they’d have to check in with each and every user before making a business decision. It would be stagnating. At some point, as Sandeep says, you have to let it go and hope that they keep up their end of the bargain?

And if they don’t, don’t we have to find another entity and start the whole process over?

Craig Seemen has talked about trust. I agree with him, there’s no way you can fully trust any of these agreements. The cards are not stacked in our favor. But. We also have to get some work done. If Adobe does change policy by jacking up prices or whatever dooms day scenario comes to mind, can’t we make the decision at that point to pay or play?

[Gary Huff]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I’m all for equal rights, but I can’t imagine Adobe writing terms where they’d have to check in with each and every user before making a business decision. It would be stagnating. At some point, as Sandeep says, you have to let it go and hope that they keep up their end of the bargain?”

I agree. Reading those terms, it just struck me as CYA legalize for Adobe so that you can’t turn around and start a class-action for every little stupid thing.

Very similar to how there were uproars over legal agreements from a host of online services, none of which panned out to anything in the end.

I mean, ultimately, how different is it from the agreement that came with the boxed copy of CS6? I bet it’s hardly different.

[Gerald Goldman]

This Southpark episode was on again recently. Good for a laugh:

https://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/382781/business-casual-g-men

Gerald Goldman
Director of Post Production
Grace Creek Media
http://www.gracecreek.com
http://www.sportskool.com

[Craig Seeman]

[Gary Huff] “I mean, ultimately, how different is it from the agreement that came with the boxed copy of CS6? I bet it’s hardly different.”

While I haven’t read the agreement on CS6, the one difference is that if they pull the plug on everything you still have CS6 to open previous work.

We’ve also seen whether a company folds its cards or EOLs software, at some point the activation server shuts down. Thus you may not even be able to move the old software. Even then there are ways to keep it going even if just to revive old projects. And yes some may resort to cracking in that case. Of course at that point the company may not be all that concerned because either the company or the product is gone from the marketplace.

As a business, I have to cover my derrière as well.