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?