Re: Photoshop CS - great upgrade for digital photographers

> Michael Geary wrote:
> > But Adobe's management, and Adobe's lawyers, are not the
> > lying thieves that you imply. I *know* these people. I work
> > with them. They are honorable people who keep their word.

Chris Brown wrote:
> Disclaimer: I don't like activation, I think it's a bad idea and
> counter-productive, just like CD "copy protection", in that the
> primary effect is to annoy your paying customers, and have
> little effect on piracy. However, it doesn't affect me personally
> in this instance because I'm using the Mac version, and I find
> CS to be a good piece of sofware.
>
> Having said that, this comment about "honorable people"
> within Adobe has a pretty hollow ring when one considers the
> appalling, scummy and frankly plain dishonourable way
> Dimitry Sklyarov was treated when he exposed just how
> fragile Adobe's EBook "protection" was. An honourable
> company would have been grateful for him bringing attention
> to a weakness in their product, so that they could fix it, not sic
> the DMCA, a law which seems to have been passed entirely to
> preserve the business models of recording industry dinosaurs
> because they refuse to adapt to the modern world, on him.
>
> So while I think Photoshop CS is a superb bit of software, I
> really don't trust Adobe do behave in a way that is honourable
> in any way. They have done nothing to earn that trust, and
> quite a lot to destroy it. It makes me nervous when people in
> my own industry can be thrown in prison in a foreign country
> for just doing their job. Adobe let down its own industry very
> badly over that incident.

I should refrain from commenting on this, except to note that
after meeting with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF),
Adobe did call for Dimitry's release and withdrew its support
for the criminal complaint against him.

For anyone not familiar with the case, this issue of the EFF
newsletter discusses it:

http://www.eff.org/effector/HTML/effect14.15.html

Here is a joint Adobe-EFF press release:

http://tinyurl.com/xhzs  or
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200107/20010723dcma.html

And a subsequent Adobe FAQ about the case:

http://tinyurl.com/28nj  or
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200108/elcomsoftqa.html

-Mike (speaking only for myself, not Adobe or anyone else)