Open Hatch

“…If you’ve bought Photoshop CS and have noticed a new service called “Adobe LM Service”, this is Macrovision SafeCast spyware..”

“..Each time Photoshop is started, SafeCast takes an inventory of the machine it’s installed on, and will refuse to load the application if it decides too much has changed…”

“This service also connects to Adobe’s server to check if your serial is a valid one..”

“The service wants internet access.. checks for hardware changes.. will prevent [Photoshop] from running.. The service cannot be permanently disabled.. When the service is manually disabled it re-enables itself each time PS is started.”

This is what has happened. That service is running on my machine, Photoshop mysteriously closes - that’s the problem and this is the cause.

So here’s how our ethically run, modern licensing and “Digital Rights Management” works: A student purchases software from a company for hundreds of dollars. Years later, the spyware the company installed unbeknownst to the student, which has been communicating back to the company’s server the whole time, shuts off the software for suspicious reasons undoubtedly not covered in the license agreement - which agreement permits the software to be used on one machine, which is exactly how it is being used - but that’s not enough for the company. “Too much” has changed in the computer environment (what computer doesn’t change after several years?), so the company thinks the student might be a pirate, and absent hard proof, they regard suspicion as enough to violate the license agreement and pull the plug - on a weekend when it is urgent for the student to get photographs together for a client.

With “license management” going postal like this, is it any wonder anyone ever resorts to piracy or license subversion? I would at the least prefer Adobe popping up a message that says “Please give us a call when you can get to it - in the next month or so, because we know you have an infant and a toddler and it’s miraculous if you ever even get the time to open our application. Don’t ask how we know, we’ve been watching everything, we know it’s kind of creepy, but we’re sorry, for technical reasons it isn’t clear whether your install has stayed on one machine.” - then train the service reps to be very non-confrontational and polite. “Oh, we’re sorry for the glitch. Here’s a fix that will make that go away.”

Is there any phone number given for customer service? Is there any communication about the perceived problem at all? No - if I even learn about this, it’s from hackers in the true, ethical sense who are onto the way Adobe unethically hacks into user’s computers. I don’t know how to circumvent this. I’m really peeved that I have to circumvent mechanisms in software I have a legal right to operate, just to get it to operate. I’ll find a way (I thought it said blocking Photoshop with the firewall works?), but that I am forced to look for a way is so incredibly uncool.

Grrrrrr.

That slick veneer of “reputable” tagged on the name of Adobe in my mind (other than that I hate pdf files) just vanished. Is there any software giant left out there to like?

On June 12, three leading textile trade associations announced their support for the Orphan Works bill.

Writing in Textile World, James A. Morrissey writes: “The legislation, which has cleared a House subcommittee, is supported by the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, the National Textile Association (NTA) and the Decorative Fabrics Association.”

Funny, that’s a 180 degree flip-flop from their House testimony of March 13, 2008. That day a spokesperson from the textile industry testified “on behalf of the hundreds of American companies” who are members of the same three trade groups. She denounced the bill, calling it “unconscionable for Congress to try to impose millions of dollars of costs on individual companies, many of which are small businesses…”

“The proposed orphan work legislation is not a solution to the ‘orphan works’ problem,” she testified. “Instead, it is a blueprint for a radically new copyright law. The inability to distinguish between abandoned copyrights and those whose owners are simply hard to find…is the Catch-22 of the Orphan Works project. This legislation would orphan millions of valuable copyrights that cannot otherwise be distinguished from true orphaned works – and that would open the door to commercial theft on an unprecedented scale.”

Strong testimony. So what happened? Did the bill improve? No, Congress just agreed to exempt textiles from the bill. So now Congress gets their endorsement.

Definition: When is cultural theft on an unprecedented scale not a problem?
Answer: When you’ve been cut out of the problem.

We hope legislators will judge the merit of such endorsements accordingly.

One last irony: the “strong testimony” quoted above was not original to the textile industry spokesperson. It was appropriated verbatim from Brad Holland’s 2006 Senate testimony and used without attribution or citation. You can read the original [here].

Don’t Let Congress Orphan Your Work
You can urge Congress to oppose these bills by linking here to a special letter.
Tell Your Senators and Representatives to Oppose the Orphan Works Act [here].

Please forward this message in its entirety to every artist you know.

My comments:

This is infuriating hypocrisy!

Now about the reply I got from Canon. My letter to him (which I now gather was vaguely scanned by an assistant and filed under “opposed”) specifically countered the oft-cited claim from supporters of the bill - that it supposedly does not endanger any managed copyrights because users of a work would have to perform a “good faith” search for the copyright holder. I went into it in my previous post on this - scan the post for the section of capital letter bullet points, it’s item E. Canon’s reply merely puppets what the drafters and supporters of the bill claim. He writes:

H.R. 5889, the “Orphan Works Act of 2008″ would limit the remedies of copyright infringement if the infringer using a work of art proves that he or she had performed a reasonably diligent search to identify and locate the owner of the copyright, but was unable to do so, or had provided accurate attribution to the author or owner if known. If proof cannot be obtained, then no limitations of remedies are available for the infringer and full copyright infringement penalties may apply.

This isn’t any kind of counterpoint - it’s exactly what my letter to him outlined is not a valid support for the bill (for the reasons I just gave here). His letter gets worse, too -

While it is obvious that the Copyright law needs updating, I simply cannot support a measure that targets or singles out a company such as satellite radio with the intention to shut down the industry as a whole by increasing its fees and negatively impacting its consumers. My position on the Judiciary Committee has given me the great opportunity to advocate technological advances while working to clarify copyright law. I will continue to work with my fellow members of Congress to resolve copyright issues in a way that addresses the interests of both the consumers and the copyright owners.

And that has what to do with the Orphan Works Act? Nothing! This is a typical political evasive non-response - but while Canon is puppeting the talking points of supporters, and he was after all on the committee approving the bill, it would appear he’s going to go right on supporting it - despite the fact that many people I know have written him to oppose it.

Canon mailed the same idiotic form reply to everyone I know who wrote him to oppose the bill.

When is it time to write President Bush and ask him to veto the bill if it crosses his desk? I’m thinking that time is now.