P: Loss of internet connection and license

OK, I will tell you at the outset, this post will NOT get vulgar or rude. That said, you have one VERY PO'd customer on your hands. Here's the deal:

I was away from home and without internet access yesterday (I let 24 hours pass before writing this so the fact I'm still this upset is a sign of how serious I think this issue is). I have been signed into Adobe CC and have used Adobe CC (Photoshop, Lightroom and Bridge) every day for the past 3 months. I am a long time subscriber to the Photography Plan (from its inception) and the Single App Plan. Yesterday I did emergency duty as a wedding photographer at a wedding I was attending. I promised to do some base processing of select images (these were all shot in RAW) and get them copies that evening for a couple of reasons that are not important to this discussion. No problem, I had my LT with me that has the second copy of Photoshop and Lightroom installed (as per the EULA) and has in the past also been used to process images in both LR & PS. When I opened Bridge to import the photographs the login screen told me I was not connected to the internet, which was correct - the internet service was down. I thought that was no problem since in the Adobe CC FAQ's that addresses this possibility, Adobe stated that you merely had to be connected at least once in 90 days (and even then there may be a bit of leeway) for the subscription to be verified. I had been connected in the previous 24 hours so I figured everything would work. It didn't. The login screen told me that my subscription could not be verified and Bridge shut down. I attempted to open the program a total of 4 more times before I gave up. I tried to open Photoshop and Lightroom with the same results. This could have cost me a job and my client a lot of money. Thank GOD I also had Capture One installed and I was able to get the job done!! 

This is completely and totally unacceptable! I am a paid up member in good standing, and I am being denied the service despite having met the criteria for the subscription. I know the EULA says that Adobe is not responsible for lost work, etc. due to any failures of their program, but you may find that someone is going to test that condition in a court of law at some point if this keeps up. You may also want to consult with your legal department what the term the courts use when you accept money for a goods or service but fail to provide that goods or service despite the customer meeting all the requirements of the EULA. 

This will NOT happen again with me. As a photographer I DO have options. I WILL be cancelling my Single App subscription largely as a result of this episode because I no longer trust Adobe to meet their end of the bargain. 

If I were the only one ever to have seen this issue, my tone might be more moderate, but I'm not. Since CC2019 this seems to be an increasingly common problem. I have seen numerous others on this forum and elsewhere of late, complaining about similar issues. I also might be more moderate (or not have subscribed to Adobe CC at all) if this potential issue had not been addressed in the FAQ's when Adobe went subscription based, to my satisfaction. It would appear as though the answer given there is not factual, OR your new login procedure is seriously flawed/broken. For those of us who make a living from our photography, the make/break lines can be rather thin and it looks totally unprofessional when a photographer can't even open the processing program he or she has paid for. I do understand piracy is a major issue for software companies and I sympathize deeply with that (I have even reported a pirate in the past), but I am sick of paying the price these pirates when I'm adhering to all the rules of the EULA. This is just the latest and most egregious example of the customer being penalized for the law breakers.

In conclusion, I have one suggestion that I think Adobe had better seriously consider (along with the unbelievably large number of broken components we are finding in Photoshop CC 2019):

FIX IT!!!

If you have suggestions as to why this is happening, I will listen and I will be respectful in my replies, but I will not accept excuses. I am the customer here and I expect to be treated as such.

Glenn

I’m currently on the road and sometimes don’t have internet access. Yesterday I got the “we can’t verify your subscription” message. This held me up until I was able to get internet access, which is extremely annoying considering I pay $50 per month for a Creative Cloud subscription. One of Adobe’s support team on Twitter explained that it needs to check every 30 days (though a response to a similar question on these forums suggest the time is 90 days), which would be fine except:

1. The message does not explain this. It would be very helpful if it did so.

2. If I was out of range for days, or weeks, instead of more than a few hours, this would have completely screwed up my plans. Why not give the user a grace period of (say) a week to let them continue working.

3. Even better would be to verify subscription status on EVERY startup if there is internet access, and only complain when the 30 (or 90) day limit since the last verification is reached? This way I (and manny others) would not have experienced this issue. I could even prepare for a trip by firing up Lightroom or whatever before heading off and be confident that I’ll always be able to use LR even if I don’t have internet access.

I appreciate your comments. I’m sure that being in a corporate environment, you are aware of how management views “cost centers” vs “profit centers.” Even when a cost center benefits the company, management often wants to cut it because they can’t show an immediate profit benefit.

For customers, licensing code is a cost center. We can discuss the differences in licensing cost given the presumed reduction in piracy, but for us, licensing and activation and DRM are annoyances that don’t have any tangible benefits. Every program I use would be easier and faster and have fewer things to break if we didn’t have that extra weight tacked on.

When Photoshop performance lags because of Select and Mask (which it does, badly) I can at least see the trade off with a new and somewhat more versatile tool than Refine Edges. I’m not happy but it’s not a total failure.

When licensing and activation code breaks or slows down a program, most customers are going to see it as a total failure, a “feature” with negative value.

Implementation of Select and Mask is an engineering issue. Implementation of licensing is a management issue. If enough people complain, you expose legacy functionality (new document window, spot healing tool, Undo shortcuts) at least some of the time. I don’t see that happening with how Adobe decides to do licensing.

Hi Lukáš, open (and even closed) WiFi networks you encounter while traveling do not generally cause the issues being discussed on this thread.  All of those networks have routers that are properly connected to the internet, and they are receiving proper time signatures (whether you are allowed to join or not).  The issues discussed above arise from joining networks whose routers are not actually internet-connected and/or are misconfigured.  These routers sometimes have incorrect time-zone information at their wireless connection layer, and that's typically what causes the time jiggle.

Thank you, Dan, for your kind response and for all clarifications. I will be looking forward to the future release. Let me wish you all at Adobe happy Holidays and a pleasant new year.

In what concerns my side, time synchronization issues might arise from open WiFi networks reachable on my travel. Usually, such a network passes a little network traffic through until it redirects every new request to a legal notice page. From this time on, network traffic is blocked (redirected to the very same page) until you agree with the terms of service and are connected to the Internet again.

I have never run out of battery with my current laptop (fairly new device) so there is no way time could be forgotten even if the mainboard battery was dead.

Here is a simple test I did.

System time is correct and Lr works fine with an Internet connection.

Internet connection lost (unplugged). System time is still correct and Lr continues to work.

System time is a day behind (set the date to yesterday) with no Internet connection. Lr will not work, displaying a dialog with the message "We can't verify your subscription status."

If you have an unreliable Internet service and have a problem with your system clock (battery dead), then the clock could easily lose its time while your computer is powered off. When your computer is powered up again, assuming that 'synchronize with Internet time' is enabled, and there is no Internet connection, the system clock will be wrong and Lr will not work while offline.

When your Internet service is finally restored, once the system clock is synchronized via the Internet time service, and Lr will work once again. If your system clock is still wrong once you have an Internet connection, then Lr will display a different dialog stating that there is a problem with your system clock.

However, Jill's problem seems to be also that she had been signed out of Creative Cloud because she had to sign in again, at least on the last occasion she reported.

There seems to be a couple of things going on here, but I would be very suspicious of the system clock!

Hi Dan, appreciate hearing from you and let's do this again. Unfortunately, your approach is a problem as you may have noted from this thread. And the new licensing window in Bridge (and I believe InDesign?) is getting a lot of complaints. It starts to draw but remains blank and blocks the program until the license is verified, for some of us on about every launch.

As for changing from network time, many customers work in a corporate setting where they are not allowed to change time settings. A corporate IT department is not going to change this for Adobe.

The perception is that Adobe engineers don't understand real-world usage and that a lot of changes over the past decade have been marketing-driven and are NOT helping regular users.

Bottom line- expiring a token because time shifts while a user is offline, preventing use of paid software, is nonsense. We all know it. You need to convince management that user-hostile design is not in anyone's best interest.

Hi Dan, appreciate hearing from you. Unfortunately, your approach is a problem as you may have noted from this thread. And the new licensing window in Bridge (and I believe InDesign?) is getting a lot of complaints. It starts to draw but remains blank and blocks the program until the license is verified, for some of us on about every launch.

As for changing from network time, many customers work in a corporate setting where they are not allowed to change time settings. A corporate IT department is not going to change this for Adobe.

The perception is that Adobe engineers don't understand real-world usage and that a lot of changes over the past decade have been marketing-driven and are NOT helping regular users.

Bottom line- expiring a token because time shifts while a user is offline, preventing use of paid software, is bullshit. We all know it. You need to convince management that user-hostile design is not in anyone's best interest.