[Andrew Kimery]

To build on what Bill has already said, satire goes a long way and people getting treated differently is the nature of the beast. If Production A meets the standards then they are protected by Fair Use. If Production B does not meet the standards then they are not protected. Context is everything which is why you can’t really make blanket statements about what may or may not be covered by Fair Use.

With regards to editing, low rez screener copies should be available (many times with TC burned in) and you cut with those and then once you lock edit you request and pay for the high rez masters of the clips you used. There is a chicken/egg aspect to it as sometimes you have to change out a shot that you want because you can’t afford it.

As far as how do shows like Cobert Report handle this? They have a research department that acquires the footage and lawyers to make sure only things legitimately acquired and cleared go on air. The more you buy the lower a fee you can negotiate (just like buying anything in bulk).

[Andrew Kimery]

[Chris Harlan] “I don’t know, dude. I think you are now the GTFO guy.”

Jeremy “GTFO” Garchow does have a nice ring to it.

[Andrew Kimery]

[David Lawrence] “That’s when I bristle at the suggestion if I don’t like Adobe’s new licensing model, I should GTFO. Sorry, but no. That’s a defeatist attitude. I want something better.”

I don’t think you should GTFO but I guess I felt like your original post was a chicken little. My feelings probably stem in part from having gone through many “OMG do you see what this EULA says!” discussions before so maybe I’m just numb to it. I mean, my ISP, Gmail, Dropbox, etc., all reserve the right to put the kibosh on my accounts at any time. Most of them have comforting language basically saying that would probably be a last resort action but that’s really just window dressing. If you have a smart phone or tablet you’ve agreed to let Google, MS, Apple, Amazon, HP, etc., reach out and zap your software (even software you paid for) should they want to. Do I see them finding a reason to do it at the drop of a hat? No, because that would be a PR nightmare.

The Kindle example is worrying because a glitch in the system caused the person to get locked out of their account. It got resolved in the end though but that doesn’t mean an SNAFU couldn’t happen under a tight deadline. I’d bet dollars to donuts thought that the number of Kindle users far out numbers Adobe users.

It’s buyer (user?) beware all over the place and we all just need to do what we are comfortable with. Heck, I still get a fleeting feeling of fear using public parking garages because they have signs all over basically saying they aren’t liable when someone comes in and stripes my car for parts. lol

[Andrew Kimery]

[Mark Suszko] “f Apple offered a less heavy-handed approach to the licensing and payments than Adobe, it might woo back a number of those they chased off with the introduction of FCPx. Though I don’t really expect Apple to do this. More like they’re slapping their foreheads and saying “We should have done that before Adobe!”

The reason I think Adobe did this now is that having both subscription and rental licenses complicates the situation a lot. A key selling point about the substitution is that upgrades can be easily rolled out at any time. You no longer have to force all the separate software departs to artificially meet the same deadlines so that the suite can be upgraded all at once. Having subscription users get upgrades and updates before perpetual license users would cause more versioning problems in the user base than Adobe already has but if you keep everyone locked into the same annual upgrade cycle you don’t take full advantage of what CC has to offer. Rock and a hard place situation and Adobe chose to just bite the bullet now.

And yes, you will see massive bootlegging and piracy directed against Adobe now, on a scale never before seen. The pirates will justify these “work-arounds” to themselves in terms of freedom from monopoly domination, or other high-handed rhetoric. But the new fun game for the script kiddies “sticking it to the corporate man” will become this week’s hack of the C-cloud, an asymmetrical war of attrition Adobe will have to fight every day.”

I would honestly be surprised if there was a significant increase in piracy. People that pirated before are still going to pirate and people running legit businesses are either going to pay for CC or stick w/CS6 for the time being. There have been cracks to the 30-day demo for years so I wouldn’t imagine cracking the demo versions of the new CC apps so they run indefinitely would be any harder.

[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.

[Andrew Kimery]

I’m afraid we are heading towards a gilded cage / walled garden ecosystem problem where Adobe (Adobe Anywhere in conjunction with CC), Avid (Interplay Sphere) and presumably Apple down the line are all coming up with ways to better connect users and integrate products at the expense of letting users easily (relatively speaking) share information across platforms. I know this isn’t a new problem but I feel like as companies integrate more collaborative and metadata-centric features into their workflows the wider the chasm will become.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Walter Soyka] “Like it or not, we are all dependent on a great many things outside of our control. We can’t have it both ways.”

Are you talking about editing or civilization?

[Andrew Kimery]

Thanks for taking the time to clarifying, Bill. In the post below Walter clears up some misconceptions that pertain to your wife’s colleague’s fears. I think it would help easy her mind some if you were able to pass this info on to her.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Bill Davis] “In fact, my wife just came in after a discussion with a production artist who’s work she’s managing for an extremely large health care financing client. She said that production artist spent 15 minutes of the long distance call vending anger and worry about how this Creative Cloud move would screw up her work as a top tier freelance artist and designer.”

This might be a stupid question but how would CC screw up her work as a top tier freelance artist and designer?

[Andrew Kimery]

[Joseph W. Bourke] “So then “Fangoil” must be really over the top…”

I believe the proper feminization of “fanboi” is “fangrrl”. Neither should be confused with fangoy (a non-Jew that has a lot of Jewish friends).