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.

[DarseZSzabo]

>I can't really imagine them remotely accessing your computer to examine your files. 

You consented to Adobe examining what you're working on at the moment, which seems quite serious enough, given that our professional and legal future is entirely in the hands of a so-called "AI" and a group of unknown people of varying and indeterminate value systems.

[Lumigraphics]

You must not get out much. Every time you get in your car, you put your life in the hands of that stranger coming down the road at 45mph in the oncoming lane. When you eat at a restaurant you trust that the cook doesn't accidentally poison you. Etc etc etc.

All this amounts to is [abuse removed] a bunch of people who have no understanding of the situation at hand.

[Buck379255317aev]

This is the worst take I've read all month

[Anya37953581ccfi]

i literally made an account just to tell you to stop simping for adobe. egregiously terrible take.

there is no reason why a company should be able to access your private files and hold your creative work hostage to do so by making you agree to terms you cannot opt out of. you have to agree to them before cancelling your subscription (whoops there goes your data regardless) and even then cancelling is a nightmare. 

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[c.pfaffenbichler]

i literally made an account just to tell you to stop simping for adobe. egregiously terrible take.

there is no reason why a company should be able to access your private files and hold your creative work hostage to do so by making you agree to terms you cannot opt out of. you have to agree to them before cancelling your subscription (whoops there goes your data regardless) and even then cancelling is a nightmare. 

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By Anya37953581ccfi

Your conduct is highly inappropriate. I recommend you apologize. 

As for the issue at hand: Have you read the clarification? 

[Lumigraphics]

Except everything you just posted is incorrect.

[Marcello M]

Here is the problem: despite the suite being one that have been using since the 1990s, Adobe has strayed far from its trustworthy former self. They may well still not access our work or train AI on it, but the legal language (yes, I have read the clarification-it is not the contract itself and therefore of less value legally) is not as definitive of my rights as it should be. Do I think that they are accessing my images right now? Perhaps, but unlikely. Will they in the future: I am all but certain of it. That is the trajectory of big tech (I don't think I need to provide examples as they are legion). And a careful reading of their language leaves that as a possibility.
I still hope they will clean up the language and continue to be of use to so many, but I am trialling several other cheaper options for photographers. ON1, for example, is a one time purchase and has an excellent transfer workflow for your catalogues (ok, catalogs, for US writers).
It's all about trust. Who among the bros and the Apple, Adobe etc. crowd can you trust?
I know what my answer is, unfortunately.

[walth7384501]

Im also deeply concerned about this, considering it seems to give Adobe the ability to arbitrarily remove our access to the software we pay for for anything they deem to be a TOS violation. I would really like to see some clarification about how and when they would be accessing your content. Also apparently this change has been in place for months!?

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

@walth7384501 Any Sas/Cloud service has the right to terminate access due to TOS violations - thats not egregious or uncommon. The "change" was rephrasing existing terms that have been there since at least 2020.

[DarseZSzabo]

I'm not sure the fact that they've been there since 2020 makes it better.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

@000egg000 @walth7384501 Nothing has changed with the terms - Adobe made the mistake of saying the quiet parts out loud.

The rest of the orignal article blows over this point: “A separate “content analysis” FAQ from Adobe says that it “performs content analysis only on content processed or stored on Adobe’s servers; we don’t analyze content processed or stored locally on your device.“

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

[dave12345645]

nothing changed, sure, People are not upset over the "change" they are upset with the Terms in general. They just finally found out how terrible they are.  Adobe's "clarrifications" don't help. Instead of saying yes our stuff is oveerreaching and we will fix it, they make a suplimental non legal binding document saying "trust us bro".

This video sums it up pretty clearly

[link removed by moderator - see guidelines on posting misleading information]

[D Fosse]

<sigh> if only people were as outraged at meta, google, apple, microsoft, etc etc etc...then we might get somewhere.

@dave12345645 Do you use Chrome? That's something to worry about.

[dave12345645]

<sigh> if only people were as outraged at meta, google, apple, microsoft, etc etc etc...then we might get somewhere.

dave12345645Do you use Chrome? That's something to worry about.

By D Fosse

You must have missed the news, people are outraged at them... There have many many recent mass cancelations, Microsoft and Unity specifically.

And how is that an argument to say "these guys are evil so we can be evil too?"

And to answer your question, No I don't use Chrome. Only time I do is when I am using a VM running it to test code.  and again, just because one company is worse, doesnt mean that you shouldnt pay attention to companies that are "slightly worse"

[MicahBurke]

Just because people are outraged doesn't make them right.  Blowing this up into an issue of moral "evil" is silly. In order for Adobe to provide the kinds of cloud-based-computing services [Generative Fill, Remove Tool, Neural Filters, Select Subject, etc] they need to access and temporarily store the image you're working on and use AI to examine and interrogate it, just to give you the quality results you expect.  

[Jose379212392gaz]

Then they should update the terms and conditions to be less vague/overreaching and more specifically for that. 

[Lumigraphics]

This is a big nothingburger. Same terms every cloud/socila media provider has. CYA move is all.

[Anya37953581ccfi]

this is not a nothingburger, you literally just have no important data that you dont want scraped and sold to companies

[CreativeElk]

I also just read it on Twitter and wasn't aware of it, whether it has changed or not. I am now over 2 days of my 14 days trial and if they don't let me out, I am warned the rest of my whole life to never spend any monay again to this company to which prodcut or ever. What a mess.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

@CreativeElk So you are basing your decision on the fact that you didn't cancel before the end of your trial? What would you expect from any company that offers a limited time trial that converts to a subscription after X amount of time?

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Scott Belsky has responded with a similar/better explanation and some feedback:

“(1) any modern cloud service has legal screening requirements like child exploitation imagery - the TOS ability to review is legally required for those who host content.
(2) the license required “solely for the purpose of operating…” is required to do basic things for customers, like making thumbnails, open a file on the Photoshop web app, index for search, etc. and when we support third-party integrations for workflows, that requires a sublicense.
(3) we have always used ML to improve masking, selection and other basic tools, but explicitly don’t train Firefly GenAI on customer content, it is trained on a licensed dataset with a customer compensation program that is well documented.”

“But I agree the summary wording is unclear and I’ve given that feedback to legal. The actual TOS are similar to any other modern software provider with cloud features that requires the service be able to ‘access’ a file — like when a user wants to open it on Photoshop web app, needs files indexed for search purposes, chooses to share a document for review online with a colleague, auto-tagging in Lightroom, or other cloud-enabled capabilities. And many of these capabilities technically require a license ‘solely for the purpose of operating’ as stated. Adobe has had something like this in TOS for over a decade."

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2024/06/06/clarification-adobe-terms-of-use

[FloatingAdrift]

They should offer a version with no cloud features.  Old school, stand alone local version.

That clarification says "To be clear, Adobe requires a limited license to access content solely for the purpose of operating or improving the services and software and to enforce our terms and comply with law, such as to protect against abusive content." 

Which isn't clear at all to me since I don't know what operating or improving actually entails.  Could mean anything.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Cloud services. Adobe needs to have rights to access what you store/share via Creative Cloud to cover themselves legally and prevent abuse/illegal activity. Every cloud service has a clause like this to limit liability.

[dave12345645]

then update the terms to be less broad and cover that specifically. The clarification document does not do that and is not legally binding.