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A comment on FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations. Parent comment

Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by acdha on Monday June 17, 2024 @12:58PM (#40707972)
An independent contractor using Adobe is still helping cement Adobe’s perception as a must-have for business. If you worked in that space at all, it was super common to have things like Illustrator or Photoshop specified in contracts for designers and print shops, and pretty much everyone needed Acrobat Pro for sone proprietary feature which didn’t exist in the alternatives.

Adobe wasn’t going to risk bad publicity going after some freelancer for $800, but they could count on everyone in that world needing to use Adobe products for compatibility reasons to provide the inertia which meant that the businesses who hired those freelancers kept paying Adobe rather than switching at the threat of a lawsuit.

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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by dylan604 on Monday June 17, 2024 @01:13PM (#40708153)
Anybody remember the Business Software Alliance[0] from years ago threatening to audit your company for using unlicensed software? I cannot believe any business would be dumb enough to allow them on their premises to even conduct an audit. Anyone with two brain cells would just laugh in their face.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Alliance

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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by crote on Monday June 17, 2024 @02:37PM (#40709361)
How exactly are you supposed to do that, when your license includes their right to audit your business? If you refuse them they're going to sue you, and they have far more money to spend on lawyers than your business.
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by dylan604 on Monday June 17, 2024 @02:50PM (#40709526)
You need to have proof that the software is being used. You also have to provide notice and cannot expect to just walk up and demand inspections. Also, this is a private company so they have no authority to do this.

The primary bit of evidence to the BSA was/is from disgruntled employees "ratting" on their employer. Is that sufficient evidence of a crime to justify a warrant for any TLA to do an investigation? If not, that's the only way you're looking at my computers.

Again, laughing in their face would be my response.

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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by stevekemp on Monday June 17, 2024 @01:49PM (#40708704)
And yet it was only last week we started hearing of Oracle sending nastygrams to Java users:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/10/fortune_200_oracle_ja...

As covered here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40639943

So this is not just a thing of the past, sadly.

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