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[PseudoCyAnts]

Ars Technica published an article about Adobe's EULA for their new online free-beta photo storage and lightweight graphic manipulation product, Photoshop Express.  Adobe was quite literally stating that by using the product, you were also giving yours up to them.  A Contractual API exposing users' graphics files to methods of netransubjugation.

Adobe released Photoshop Express this week, its first SaaS (Software as a Service) offering in the form of a free Web-based photo editing, organizing, and sharing service. The early reaction to this (naturally) beta program has been positive, but a few aggressive terms in its EULA have caused some to put down their color adjustment palettes. While Adobe has already stated that it is rewriting the terms in question, it has still joined the growing list of major software shops who aren't paying attention to their own EULAs.

Specifically, the Photoshop Express terms that got people's exposure sliders in a twist are on page two of the service's terms disclosure (unavailable as of this writing):

Use of Your Content. Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

David Chartier, Adobe joins list of companies not reading own EULAs", Ars Technica, March 29, 2008

Mr. Chartier was being far too kind, giving Adobe the benefit of the doubt, letting them off the hook with a claim of being totally clueless about the EULA used in their big new product roll-out.  A long-term top of the food chain commercial software player doesn't read their own EULAs?  What, Adobe doesn't shop at 1st tier law-schools for hot shot legal department fills?  It's preponderately unlikely. The EULA reads like a product packaged in an attorney conference session.  It starts off dropping two solid anchors in safe harbor, before they get around to unimparing users from their ownership rights, freeing up possible usage of the graphics as commodities in any of their net-trafficking schemes, present, planned, and yet to be conceived.

Mercantinihilism: profitability without any possible liability.  If someone other than the user later claims that the work is rightfully theirs, Adobe sits in safe harbor, as they clearly stated twice in the first 13 words of the cited paragraph, that the content is not theirs, they are just being good corporate netizens, and supplying free online storage for what others' claim as their property.  Yet Adobe remains free to do whatever they desire with it, even pillage, rape and maim. Profiteering, by pimping other peoples' product, for just a little window dressing and cheap floppy-house storage in out of pocket change expense.

That's really a harsh lowballing of Adobe's costs. Without a doubt, high volume bandwidth filled with extremely low signal to noise, we are after all talking about users' creative work-product. Guaranteed, Adobe is using well distributed pipes fat as Hoover Dam's intake tunnels, and they have developed graphics data mining systems with algorithms that can at the very least, flag only production quality files.  That's just reading resolutions, color palettes, clarity, lack of artifacts, exposure, etc.  The scanning systems may even be possess a primitive ability to guess about subject matter.  A corporate whale, feeding on plankton in the datastreams.

I wonder how much of the costs for the Photoshop Express set-up will end up expensed as a beta-test liability, while siphoned product acquired from it gets greatly undervalued on the asset-side of the balance sheet.

[neoboho]

I can see Adobe's rationale for its user agreement, without wanting to steal everyone's creative products.  But I guess the issue is that under the agreement it can do anything with the work of the users if it chooses.  But upload limits into the Flash housing of P.Express is limited to 4000 pixels - not an attractive resolution for professional use of a digital photo. 

My hunch is that Adobe is doing this for advertising it products.  It's still in Beta, but I wouldn't be surprised if they offer you increased bandwidth for a fee when and if the product flies.  Right now you can only store 2 gb total - looks like it's aimed at cell phone and ipod users, actually. 

Besides, if you put it on the web, expect it to be stolen.  It is a great honor, after all. 

Express also has a very low-end editor, worse that Ps Elements.  But that's all a lot of folks want, or need.

[cscs]

Interesting. This is definitely "software as advertising."

But the wording is really strange: We don't claim to own your content, but we have the right to do anything with it. We don't own it, but we retain all rights and privileges that is granted to the owner.

No doubt it's not a mistake.

Eventually all software will be a "service" one day. No hard drives; everything stored in the ether of the network. Adobe seems to be simply putting a stake in the ground now, when it doesn't matter, to reap the benefits later, when it counts.

[neoboho]

That may be true - putting its stake in the ground.  Years ago when rumors started that California was going to meter agricultural water in the future, the Southern Pacific Land Company immediatey installed meters on all of it's wells and started pumping water into ditches (as well as irrigating the cotton).  So when metering came, they were able to document previous water consumption for the purpose of water allocations.

[PseudoCyAnts]

The Eula update isn't much of a change:

"...you grant Adobe and the users of this Site an unrestricted, irrevocable, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free and fully paid up license under all Intellectual Property Rights to use, reproduce, publicly display, publicly perform, copy, edit, modify, translate, reformat, transmit and distribute such User Materials, with or without having your name attached to such User Materials, in any manner or form and for any purpose, with full rights to sublicense such rights through multiple tiers of distribution, and you also acknowledge and agree that Adobe is free to use any ideas, concepts, know-how or techniques that you provide for any purpose without any compensation to you. You acknowledge and agree that Adobe shall not be liable for any failure to store User Materials on the Site at any time."

They work around skipping the explicit safe harbor declarations elsewhere, with strong note of  "User Materials", and they still clearly state that anything they like that you submit, is theirs for the taking.

Neoboho, your point about resolution is only valid when considering professional photo/print products. Within web paradigms, any graphics file over 100 px/inch is largely wasteful, unless it is going to be dynamically sized larger than  original, because computer monitors generally display at 96 px/inch.  I am one who has frequently criticised the digital mindset.  In audio, the concept is utterly absurd, because ears are analog pick-ups, operating in a 3-dimensional space. Dimensional sound algorithms and adept sound engineers have done remarkable things with two-diminesion production of sound, but it is nowhere near as good as live, analog reel-to-reel or direct to vinyl analog recordings. In graphics, it's not quite as bad because our eyes can be well-modeled digitally, if the resolution and colour depth is great enough, but it still will always break at some point when scaling, because true film negatives are not pixelated.  Still, with present tech, the resolution/colour depth has become great enough to mimic film well.

[neoboho]

Yes, you're correct.  I was thinking about printing, as in digital photos.  The Eula is interesting.  I says "Adobe" AND "the users of this Site."  Does that mean if I use the sight and see someone elses work that I can ignore property and download the work and, say, sell it as a postcard or something? 

The very first (and only) time I used ebay I got ripped-off.  I thought Ebay had some responsibility, but they insisted they had cya mechanisms in place that protected them from any responsibility at all.  Isn't this what Adobe might be doing?  I someone rips off another Express users work, the victim can't blame the Adobe.

[PseudoCyAnts]

Yes, you're correct.  I was thinking about printing, as in digital photos.  The Eula is interesting.  I says "Adobe" AND "the users of this Site."  Does that mean if I use the sight and see someone elses work that I can ignore property and download the work and, say, sell it as a postcard or something? 

The very first (and only) time I used ebay I got ripped-off.  I thought Ebay had some responsibility, but they insisted they had cya mechanisms in place that protected them from any responsibility at all.  Isn't this what Adobe might be doing?  I someone rips off another Express users work, the victim can't blame the Adobe.

I am unsure exactly what is encompassed under the heading Use Of Adobe Materials And User Content in the EULA, as I've not registered to use the service and am not likely to either.  There are enough free graphics hosting sites, which provide methods for hot linking which are more than adequate to satisfy my personal needs for graphics files served pseudo-anonymously (example after post).

A confession, which I wanted to wait a few days giving, to think about my thread-starter post-publication, as it is a method I use for working new concepts out.  It was done in a style I refer to as "free-falling"; a type of almost subconscious ravening I enjoy.  It was also an extension of this previous web 2.0 muse.  It should not be taken at face value necessarily, and instead viewed as an exercise in hyperbole.  My current assessment of the anti-semantics instances follows:

• "mercantinihilism" hits me intuitively as possessing potential transformative value, although I'm unsure what it is.
  
• "netransubjugation" is totally useless, as it is too distorted, and is also flavoured lightly with unintended anti-Catholicism (transubstantiation). It's weaslie to use it this way, and the form should only be used as a direct criticism of Catholicism.
  
• "unimparing", now that's a creation with real use potentiality - the only way you can take my work product is when you unimpair its copyright from my inanimate gray matter
  
• "profiteering via pimping other peoples' product" is decent alliteration, and the allusion, "plankton in the datastreams", is usable.

See, it's also a sort of feedback loop for input of content which may be used in future ravenings.

After further thought about the main assertion, I believe it has a good deal of merit, but with some qualifications. Adobe has shown themselves in the past to be less than aggressive or uptight about their high-end software's piracy for individual private usage.  Even as recently as 5 years ago, an Adobe Corporate VP mentioned to me that their attitude about it was virally old-school, and that they were fairly comfortable with this sort of piracy, because it tended to increase their dominant position in commercial usage.  It is a good business strategy to use software your employees are already familiar and comfortable with using.  The Photoshop version I'm currently using is an ancient 5.02, as I've never been real comfortable with software piracy, other than as trialware, and the Adobe sticker is pricey.  I've played around with GIMP, but it just isn't the same.  Have you actually tried Photoshop Express?  I looked at it quickly, but didn't bother signing up for it.  I was wondering if they allowed layering with transparency settings though.  That's a minimal essential function for a workable graphics software package.

The primary Adobe software downside in my mind is the Portable Document Format from bloated hell. I hate the damn things with a passion.  Even documents in the public domain can be difficult to extract and use if enveloped in a PDF wrapper. FOIA documents are doubly odious, because they are usually a poor res graphic file scans of the original document embedded in a PDF file. I just learned today though, that my aversion to PDFs has been an obstacle in properly using its inherent OCR capability.  I was unaware it even existed, but today I downloaded the latest Yoo travesty in two PDFs of scanned images, was playing around with the Adobe Reader, and noticed that save as text was highlighted as an option.  I clicked save as text, and was surprised to see it saved as an imperfect OCR scan, which looks to be about as good as I'd get if I were to print and then scan it using my OCR software, which is a nightmare of time a consumer when it's a large document.  Plus one for Adobe on this function.  Does anyone know how long I've been in the dark about it?

In Re: the 2 gig storage limits: I just did a check on my Photochop stock collection.  It has now grown to be 1.14 GB total in size consisting of 3,6222 files in 236 folders.  It includes a large quantity news photos of prominent politicians, but it also includes a growing graphics files collection, which had elements in them that were potentially going to be used as fills and remixes.  Most are copyrighted work, but an increasing number are either friends/my personal photos and public domain files. As I've progressed in photochoppery, I've traversed farther away from the common practise of using a complete digital photograph with added commentary, and instead usually work with multiple images, as well as self-generated content for final product.  Granted, it isn't my PSD versions of work in progress/stasis/saved, as those go into a completely different folder, but that still represents a lot of graphics files in substantially less than 2 gigs, some of which are high res Hubble Telescope TIFs.
A personal favorite for remote loadable image hosting is XS.to.
I like them, because they do not require an account,
and files that are not called over an period of time automatically are deleted.
Here's a tribute to Tony Blair (their servers sometimes are sluggish - hit reload if the image didn't load):



It's been received positively by all Brits/Europeans I've shown it to, much less so domestically.  One Brit journo friend requested a Gordon Brown as slug or worm, but I've not gotten around to toying with the idea yet.

[neoboho]

I love the poodle, PseudoCyAnts.  Great work.  I've got one that you might consider for a background:


BTW, I used pretty high resolution files for this mix - the Bush came right-off the White House web site. 

Funny your comments on piracy.  An associate recently sent me the official discs fors the latest high-end Adobe suite - it has everything.  He said he had a two station license to boot, so it would be legal.  I installed, but I wasn't able to get through Adobe's online activation: "this software is installed on another platform" or something like that.  Meanwhile, my Mac G4 tower went hinky-doo, and I bought an Imac Intel with the big monitor.  I love it - but now I don't have any Adobe Software.  I've used Illustrator and Photoshop since the beta releases - and when InDesign came out I jumped right on it.  One of these days I'm going to have to commit to the gargantuan task of porting these applications over, but it's not simple since I have purchased versions that have been upgraded with files and disks that I have no idea where they are.  But my point is that Adobe now has a system that is pretty effective against piracy.  I'm sure it can be cracked, but cracking requires advanced geekicity to avoid the software police. 

I haven't used Express either - I would really be surprised if it supported layers.  And I don't think it would support plug-in either, and I think third party plug-ins and filters are important to photoshop.  One that I find critical (to raise resolution for editing) is Fred Miranda's Stair-Interpolation plug-in.  http://www.fredmiranda.com/shopping/SImpro

[PseudoCyAnts]

I used pretty high resolution files for this mix - the Bush came right-off the White House web site. 

Funny your comments on piracy.  An associate recently sent me the official discs fors the latest high-end Adobe suite - it has everything.  He said he had a two station license to boot, so it would be legal.  I installed, but I wasn't able to get through Adobe's online activation: "this software is installed on another platform" or something like that.  Meanwhile, my Mac G4 tower went hinky-doo, and I bought an Imac Intel with the big monitor.  I love it - but now I don't have any Adobe Software.  I've used Illustrator and Photoshop since the beta releases - and when InDesign came out I jumped right on it.  One of these days I'm going to have to commit to the gargantuan task of porting these applications over, but it's not simple since I have purchased versions that have been upgraded with files and disks that I have no idea where they are.  But my point is that Adobe now has a system that is pretty effective against piracy.  I'm sure it can be cracked, but cracking requires advanced geekicity to avoid the software police.

I like the Bush as Napoleon.  Did you get lucky with the skin tone, or did you have to tweak it?  Serving it off of bartcop gets scored as counting coup in by book, unless you have an innate underlying relationship.  Mastery at never ending stream of consciousness ravening, and as I recall, a retired cop, living in Oklahoma, who did not allow his occupation to cloud the sensibilities of natural liberty along the way.  Reminds me a lot of family friends on my father's side (WWII buds), whose ranch I visited once, while wandering as a returning son out in Lubbock, I think '73.  It's people like those Lubbock folk. who still make it seem incredible to me that Texas produced the two most dim-witted presidents in my lifetime, both possessing the political instincts of a rattlesnake in the brush; both who bled our military in a needless foreign war, and both who could lose a game of wits against a fence post opponent.

I can't offer much advice on the software, other than a quick thought that it might be possible to exploit the 30 day free-trial software by loading it into a fresh build on your box, if you cut the network connections, burn a complete back-up image, and every 30 days, reload it after screwing with the computer's inner calendar.  More work and downsides than I'd be willing to deal with. Using Apple might make another solution problematical, because there is not as much surplus software inventory floating around.  After posting the previous message on this thread, I checked-out Photoshop offerings at Amazon dot com, and found many CS2 offers, claiming to be factory sealed retail boxes, for a little less than $250, which could then be upgraded to CS3 . The total sticker price significantly less than the retail for CS3 by its lonesome.  Adobe won't allow me to upgrade from 5.0x to CS3 in one hop.  I believe a two version upgrade is the max allowed.

[neoboho]

Tweaked the skin-tones, yes.  That's always the challenge with composites - local color. 
Bartcop liked and used the image, and asked for more.  I sent him two more, but never heard back from him.  Two bad...I thought for a minute there that I could become a political digitist.

[moat]

I love the bangs on the Napoleon Bush.

The company I work for definitely has to account for the seats taken from Adobe and we are choosy about who takes them. I understand why Adobe wants to get paid on the terms they set out but their present practices run counter to the business model they used to have: Become indispensable and don't worry about the rest.
As they get more interested in getting paid now, we have become more interested in other ways to produce our product without them.