But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites - especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis. Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. That may be good for the bottom line in the short run, but it's really risky in the long run. But forcing them to buy multiple versions makes them a lot less happy. Many people are happy to buy Adobe products. If Adobe's smart, it'll head off competitors not by continuing this sort of anti-consumer behavior, but by focusing on continuing to add more value to the products, while making them more consumer friendly. I would argue that even if Adobe's lock-in position is dominant today, it won't always be, and pissing off consumers with ridiculous stunts like this won't help. So how do people break that cycle? When the "lock-in" from the user base is pretty strong, how is it possible to get people to move to solutions that aren't so anti-consumer? Alternatively, how could Adobe itself adjust, so that it's more reasonable? Opening that up would definitely drive significantly more competition (which is why Adobe doesn't want to do it). To date, it's definitely been difficult for others to get into the market - and part of that is the proprietary nature of the way Adobe saves files. Of course, it also seems like it should be an opportunity for others in the market. When the BSA actively urges employees to "rat out" their employers, and seems, at times, to relish going after small businesses, this creates serious chilling effects. And that would work if there wasn't such a huge risk in doing so. If it's not really enforcing copyright on most players, then those who are able to afford the upgrades do, and those who can't, don't (but likely get unauthorized versions). Now, some may point out that this is Adobe's way of doing implicit price discrimination. Many people will buy one version, but feel that it's somewhat extortionate to force people to buy the latest version just to open files. Ultimately, everyone had to upgrade to the trial version of CS5, and then the clock was ticking and we had 1 month to finish.Īdobe's response to all of this is, effectively, "well, buy a copy of all versions." Easier said than done, of course, and that's where it helps drive unauthorized infringement. We bought CS5 in our Columbia U office (via a not-ridiculously-priced academic license at $300), but the original layout had used Mac fonts, which the PC rendered differently. So when our layout designer (CS3) handed the doc off to our map illustrator (CS4), the document saved up and was no longer readable by the former. All of them break compatibility with the previous versions. Adobe has released 3 versions of InDesign in 4 years. Once the text is laid out in publishing software (for us, InDesign), all of these stages are most easily done in InDesign. Like a lot of publishing projects, the production of MPEE was a small scale collaboration involving free lance help for book layout, maps, and proofing. And Adobe seems to have perfected death by incompatibility: But when - as is almost always the case in design - there are collaborative efforts where files need to be shared, it's deathly. That's fine if only you are using the product. But, as Joe Karaganis pointed out a few weeks ago (yes, this one's old, but I'm catching up), Adobe seems to go to ridiculous lengths to make things worse for paying customers by not making some of its products backwards compatible. Adobe's products have become something of a standard in the design world, and because of that, there's something of a monopoly tax (though, some new entrants really are trying to break that). And, yet, at the same time, its own actions may be one of the biggest causes of infringement of its software. Adobe is one of the key backers of the BSA, which is famous for its, at times, highly questionable tactics in "raiding" companies and accusing them of having infringing software and forcing them to pay up.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |