Deeply concerned over new terms of service agreement

[ckuehne]

I was seeing that people were launching Photoshop and seeing an agreement they had to accept in order to launch it, and it sounded like anything at all being created or altered in Photoshop could be used by Adobe in any way they want. I did not see this same thing pop-up in After Effects, this morning. Does anyone know if this is being planned for After Effects as well? My concern is that clients will not allow me to use After Effects, at all, if any footage I use in it is being sent to Adobe to be used however they like.

[Matthew249224202mcs]

The ToS, as written at least, seem designed to offend Adobe's entire professional user base.

We have to grant Adobe a non-exclusive, worldwide, ROYALTY-FREE, SUBLICENSABLE license, to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, PUBLICLY PERFORM, and translate the Content. 

I'm not an IP lawyer, but that sounds to me like we have to authorize Adobe to take our work, modify it, sell it, display it, license it to others for profit, etc. 

So... if you use Adobe Illustrator to work on a book, and Paramount wants to buy the movie rights... Adobe can sell those to the studio and cut you out completely?  Use your art for commercials? Train their AI royalty free?

If that's not Adobe's intent they better make that clear real fast.  Every person I've spoken to is some amount of furious right now.

[Matthew249224202mcs]

4.2 Licenses to Your Content. Solely for the purposes of operating or improving the Services and Software, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free sublicensable, license, to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and translate the Content. For example, we may sublicense our right to the Content to our service providers or to other users to allow the Services and Software to operate as intended, such as enabling you to share photos with others. Separately, section 4.6 (Feedback) below covers any Feedback that you provide to us. 

[daveysheps]

i hadn't even seen this bit of the ToS. This is insane. I'm in the UK, it's 1am and i've had a few drinks so please forgive me if i'm not reading this right (or indeed typing nonsense) but this seems completely nuts. Obviously it's disgustingly immoral. But morality aside, this is an insane legal minefield -  if you do a job for, say, an ad agency - the contract will say any work you create while working for them is owned by the agency (or, ultimately, the client). Is every creative worldwide now going to have to say, 'nah mate, it's owned by Adobe'. No brand will own their own advertising??? No creative agency will own their own copy and artwork (and, by proxy, strategy???) I need to read this again tomorrow morning while sober coz this is making my head explode.... 

Thank you for highlighting this. Jeeeeeez 

Mod note: No profanity, please. We have minors reading here.

[Henrik Heigl]

Hi,

here is some Clarification about that Topic from Adobe https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2024/06/06/clarification-adobe-terms-of-use
Hope that helps.

[daveysheps]

Thank you and i appreciate you posting this. 

Sadly, it's a very poor clarification and does nothing to allieve the very major issues the new ToS has thrown up. But thanks for posting anyway! 

[FloatingAdrift]

By default, they also make you "Opt-In' for content analysis on your data  (https://account.adobe.com/privacy). I take this to mean that all of the data they have had access to up until I realized I needed to opt out has already been used for their analysis.  It's very troubling to me that they set this on by default rather than give you the option when (reluctantly) agreeing to the new TOS. 

This whole thing is creepy and not absolutely clear, even in the 'clarification' link mentioned in this thread as to what they are doing with the data. 

I've been using Adobe for my entire life, and this is leading me to move to other options.

[lydiaj15488900]

Now that Adobe has come out saying that art saved to the Creative Cloud will and can be used to train Ai. I am now looking at other platforms and will not be renewing any CC service or Fresco for that matter until Adobe makes it so that the work done on Fresco won't be auto saved to the cloud or they change their terms to not use CC art without us opting in to it being used for AI training. Anyone found any good vector apps that would be good to try? Procreate won't work for the art I need to create for clients who need to edit line work 

[fbellomo@aol.com]

Hi,

How to I opt out of the changes you put into your licensing agreement stating that you can review and listen to my content?  Please take this as notice that I do NOT give you permission!

If the only option to stop you from doing this to cancel, then please cancel my account, but you still DO NOT have permission to review my content.  

Thanks,
Frank

[johnrellis]

To opt out, see the question "Can I turn off (or opt-out of) content analysis for product improvement and development?" in the Content Analysis FAQ:

https://helpx.adobe.com/manage-account/using/machine-learning-faq.html

But note that Firefly, the technology behind LR's new Generative AI Remove, doesn't train on images you process with Remove:

https://helpx.adobe.com/firefly/faq.html#training-data

"As an Adobe customer, is my content automatically used to train Firefly?

No, we don't train on any Creative Cloud subscribers’ personal content. For Adobe Stock contributors, the content is part of Firefly’s training dataset, in accordance with Stock Contributor license agreements."

[MrApricots]

John,

I'm curious about your thoughts regarding the points raised in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEbgh-q7RCc which raises concerns over the Adobe EUA changes. The concerns seem to go beyond if one's images can be used and train Adobe's AI, and onto the ability of Adobe to view and analyze private images. In addition to the lack of privacy, the Adobe EUA terms potentially cause people to violate non-disclosure agreements they have signed to prevent the images they work on from being seen by others. 

[dj_paige]

Tony and Chelsea Northrup, in my opinion, are "doomsayers" on many issues, negative to the extreme on many issues. I refuse to watch their videos any more. They may be 100% correct on this issue (I don't know, I didn't watch) but their past performance is poor.

[johnrellis]

I only listened to the first couple minutes of the video -- I get impatient with the slow pace and literal hand waving of influencer video (except to watch cats, dogs, and spaceships). But I have read closely the Adobe General Terms of Use, the Adobe Generative AI Additional Terms, and their current policy on Firefly training data.   I found the referenced Petapixel article a more detailed, objective, and dispassionate analysis of the current situation.

The General Terms of Use (section 4.2) does grant Adobe a limited license to use uploaded user content "solely for the purposes of operating or improving the Services and Software". Northrup is correct that though the Terms give examples of how they might do that, there's no limitation on the methods they might use, including manual review of the content. 

But the Terms do not allow Adobe to use content for anything other than operating or improving their services and software. As the founder of two cloud-service startups in decades past, It's hard for me to imagine how a cloud service provider could practically operate without occasionally needing to examine the content privately. For example, suppose a client's photos are repeatedly crashing the servers -- of course, the engineers need to examine the photos, sometimes visually.

If Adobe were to "spy" on your content and then disclose details of the content  other than for specifically improving the services and software, that would violate your ownership rights, which the Terms explicitly confirm you retain (section 4.3). Such disclosure would be legally actionable.

This isn't the first time that Adobe's legal department has exhibited lack of marketing communication skills. They were especially clumsy in threatening users (as only lawyers and the mob can do) to remove old versions of Adobe software that used Dolby libraries, when Adobe was in a licensing dispute with Dolby.

[MrApricots]

John,

Thank you for the helpful well-reasoned response. 

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Hi Everyone, please read this update from Scott Belsky. Adobe is listening.

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2024/06/10/updating-adobes-terms-of-use

[johnrellis]

Thanks.  Linkedin says Scott Belsky is Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President of Design & Emerging Products and Dana Rao is  General Counsel, Chief Trust Officer, Executive Vice-President.

[Conrad_C]

Another view on this, from the respected Mac publication TidBITS, placing it in context with other similar terms changes by other companies that also got the Internet all abuzz:

The Ineffable Importance of Corporate Communications

What should we take away from these missteps? First, when this sort of problem crops up again—and it will—I recommend that most people chill out for a few days. In each of these cases, the problem largely resolved itself quickly. It will do you no good to stress out about a problem that will go away so soon.

That’s not to criticize the people who did freak out. Yes, many of them were playing to a social media audience and exaggerating the potential downside, but the resulting media attention may have been necessary to get these companies to update their documents, clarify what they meant, and back down from potentially problematic changes.

On the other hand, it’s painfully obvious that companies need to do a better job with corporate communications. Each of these situations could have been avoided.

The article notes the more detailed Adobe clarification, which has change tracking visible for inspection.

A clarification on Adobe Terms of Use – Adobe Communications Team

The reason this keeps happening is that terms of service are typically written by lawyers to be technically correct in a court of law, but not very understandable for normal people. Some companies do a better job than others of writing terms of service that restate them in language that is less likely to be misinterpreted by the rest of us.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Adobe has posted updated Terms with explainers:

https://www.adobe.com/legal/terms.html

and responses from an interview with Scott Belsky:

https://petapixel.com/2024/06/18/adobes-terms-of-use-controversy-provided-an-opportunity-to-improve/

[DarseZSzabo]

I do not consent to content moderation of work that hasn't been deliberately uploaded by users to Adobe servers. 

I am passionately against illegal exploitative imagery...but also, at the same time, passionately against an external body that wants to scan work for such imagery.  Such actions should be only undertaken with the proper legal framework, in which case it would be fully justified.

We've all seen how limited these algorithmic scanners can be.  And given the nature of artistic expression, not to mention issues around intellectual property and the nature of what is considered "offensive" according to social/political trends, there are too many ways for some system to make the wrong judgement on content that will inevitably result in false positives.  Not to mention the ability for Adobe to data mine user content...that we seem to currently have too few tools to oversee or limit.  

Of course it's understood that Adobe should disallow various imagery on their servers, but because of the above stated limitations of these scanning algorithms, should not be moderating private content that was never intended to be sent to Adobe servers.  

The simplest solution would be for users to have access to versions of software without content moderation, and of course without the benefits of generative/neural features.

Again, this argument isn't some gateway to produce exploitative imagery...this is to limit how much external parties can make incorrect judgements on, and have access to, content that can affect users professionally and legally.

[ Revised content inserted by moderator at the request of @DarseZSzabo ]

[Ged_Traynor]

@DarseZSzabo this is primarily a user to user forum, so you're not really addressing Adobe here, have a look at this related thread

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/photoshop-s-new-terms-of-service-requ...

[Lumigraphics]

When you upload child sexually abusive images to Adobe's server, they will remove it and they will turn you in to the FBI.

[DarseZSzabo]

Would it be possible to clarify how that addresses anything in my comment?

[Lumigraphics]

Yes.

ADOBE WILL (MUST) LOOK AT YOUR CONTENT IF IT IS ON THEIR SERVERS. Just like Facebook, Youtube, X, TikTok, etc etc. They have a legal requirement to remove illegal and infringing material, which of course varies by country.

The only exception would be services that are end-to-end encrypted and the provider CAN'T see your content. And politicians are trying hard to outlaw that.

[DarseZSzabo]

This makes perfect sense, in the case of generative content or neural filters where we are using cloud resources.  But Adobe wants to look at your content, all the time:

1. Access is needed for Adobe applications and services to perform the functions they are designed and used for (such as opening and editing files for the user or creating thumbnails or a preview for sharing).

The fact that non-AI/non-Generative content is being monitored by their so-called "AI" and team of people (of unknown judgement) is precisely the issue at hand. 

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

@DarseZSzabo read the Terms of Service that you agreed to. If you wish to not abide by the terms of service, unsubscribe and stop using this or any other cloud-based sharing service for your personal images. They all have the same access to prevent illegal abuse.

[DarseZSzabo]

The issue isn't whether I abide by the TOS, I absolutely do as stated in the post.  The issue is whether these TOS should exist and the problems inherent in any corporate body to be trusted to make good decisions in the matter.