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Using older Adobe CC apps could get you sued, Adobe warns

by 60 Comments

A few days ago, Adobe discontinued older versions of some Creative Cloud apps. The company is now sending emails to its customers warning them of potential legal actions. That is, if you continue using these apps – you risk getting sued for infringement by third parties.

Matt Roszak shared a copy of the email on Twitter, commenting that it’s time to cancel the subscription:

As I can conclude from the email, Adobe’s records show the users who still use the old apps, and they will get this warning. It reads that “you are no longer licensed to use [the old apps],” adding that, if you keep using them, “you may be at risk of potential claims of infringement by third parties.”

But to make things clear, it’s not Adobe who’s threatening to sue you. They have probably licensed tech from third-party companies in older versions of CC apps. Now, this license has expired, and those third-party companies might go after you if you keep using them. Something similar happened last year when Adobe removed a few versions of Adobe Premiere Pro due to Dolby licensing issues.

Still, I believe this isn’t much of a consolation. If you’re working on an older computer, the lawsuit warning won’t magically make it more powerful so it can support the latest CC apps. Many people still use the old versions precisely because their machines can’t run the newer ones.

Although they were discontinued for download, the older CC apps should continue to run just fine if you have downloaded and installed them earlier, as DIYP pointed out before. However, it seems that using them now carries the possibility of facing legal actions. I guess this warning email should make you think twice whether you’ll still use the old apps or upgrade to new ones. Or just switch to one of the alternatives.

[via Photo Rumors]

Related posts:

Adobe Creative Cloud increases prices in the UK and Sweden Adobe will no longer support Windows 7 in the next major Creative Cloud update Adobe Creative Cloud apps are now available for Chromebooks Adobe deletes Lightroom 6 if you update it, but here’s how to bring it back
  • Berkinster

    I dont know, ADOBE what is trying to do but I think; It’s end is near.

  • But why? If I already bought it?

    • Greg Silver

      Read the EULA from any software. Even if you don’t buy the subscription and purchase it outright, you still don’t OWN the software. You simply purchased the right to use the software as specified in the terms in the EULA.

      It doesn’t give you the right to do whatever you want with it because you paid money for it. Meaning you can’t do things such as make multiple copies, sell the software, reverse engineer it, etc.

  • make them useful without internet and then we talk…

  • Adobe wants to lose some clients?

  • “But to make things clear, it’s not Adobe who’s threatening to sue you. They have probably licensed tech from third-party companies in older versions of CC apps. Now, this license has expired, and those third-party companies might go after you if you keep using them. Something similar happened last year when Adobe removed a few versions of Adobe Premiere Pro due to Dolby licensing issues.”

  • A lot of bad news for Adobe recently. It’s like they want to kill themselves…

  • All of mine are stand alone ones. So feck ’em 🤣😎

  • I’ll just leave this here…

  • Hang on, hang on!
    So people brought a license to use the adobe software.

    Now adobe are telling people older licenses are no longer valid.

    Sounds like adobe have failed to provide a product/service already paid for.

    Looks like adobe owe a lot of customers money…

    • No. people bought a subscription. With the subscription you get free updates. If you buy a subscription and don’t update, you’re doing it wrong.

    • A subscription service that is being paid for should be provided no matter what version as you are paying for that subscription. It’s up to adobe to pay their third party developers to ensure the product/service is supplied as legally required.

      Failure to do so is a breach of the consumer protection act. On the grounds of failure to provide a product/service which has been paid for.

    • Cameron Reaves I don’t see any obligation here for Adobe to continue to provide obsolete versions to users who subscribe.

  • Already cancelled subscription. Ripoff.

  • Bye

  • That kind of business makes me consider cancelling my subscription.

  • Adobe are really starting to annoy me

  • In this day and age ‘knee jerk’ reactions seem so common.
    But wait… Adobe is talking about CC apps, where they would expect their customers to upgrade. After all this is the point of a CC subs right?
    What I do not understand is if a previous version contains 3rd party licenses, it means these features are still part of the EULA for that version. The newer version will not have that a Licence agreement and thus the feature has been removed. I do not see any legal conflict between old and new versions..
    It sounds more like Adobe marketing tactics in getting their customers to use the latest version.

    • You don’t buy software licenses from Adobe anymore. You rent them. 🙂

    • You don’t ‘buy’ any software, Adobe or otherwise.

    • Exactly. You never *own* software. Unless you’ve paid to have it written yourself.

    • I didn’t say buy software. I said buy software *licenses*.

    • Ever read the small print on one?

    • John is your reply to my comment? I’m confused, I did not mention the buying of anything. You are right though, with virtually all software you enter an EULA either perpetually or for a limited period.
      It may be interesting to see what exactly is written in these old versions as to see if there is an expiry date to the version agreement?

    • My initial reply was to you, yes. Every time you renewed your subscription, the old license expired. You no longer have a license to use the older versions of the software. So, what you did or didn’t agree to in the past doesn’t matter now, today. 🙂

    • John Aldred is that stated in the EULA that you must use the latest CC version as part of the subscription contract?
      I don’t remember reading that.

  • No thanks

  • There is a lot of Information missing in the article, as the email also has a table of all versions, this applies to. If anyone is using one of the affected versions is way behind and should update, anyway.

  • For Lightroom this is a no-brainer: the last versions are faster (even on low-end computers) and better.
    Still not perfectly optimized, but better: yes.

    • Peter

      But they are really quick to drop support for older OS versions, meaning not everyone can use the newest version of LR.

      This is particularly problematic on macOS where some computers are not supported by the newer OS versions, and it’s going to get worse when Apple drops support for running 32-bit software in the next version. A lot of people will have to stay on an old OS version to be able to access files in existing video codecs and run 32 bit software.

      I’m sure most people, especially hobbyists, won’t appreciate having to buy a new computer because Adobe suddenly decides they can’t stay on their version of LR. Adobe already quietly blocked the Maps module on older LR versions, which is bad enough.

      Other programs like Encore for DVD authoring don’t even have a recent version. Even when moving to an alternative software, this means that older projects can no longer be opened if they need to be re-exported with a minor change, they would have to be re-created from scratch.

  • “Upgrade or we’ll sue you”

    Hahah, fuck you Adobe.

  • I’m pretty sure that this might violate -or at least is questionable before some German or even EU-laws on consumer rights. Not everything what is written in an EULA will prevail in a legal case.

  • Greg Silver

    @Matt Roszak, you aren’t paying for software, you’re paying for a subscription to use the software Adobe says is available. It’s a big difference how you look at it.

    • Luuk.vanRiel

      Well they can go fuck of with their subscription then. They keep pulling this kind of anti customer bullshit and have been neglecting the actual needs of professionals (reliability and speed over useless gimmicks and features no pro would even consider using)
      If they want to offer cloud functionality they can do that just fine with an optional subscription on top of a purchase of the software.
      Yes its a money making scheme cooked up by some accountants seeing how other cloud services make their money.
      In the proces they alienate all their loyal users. Especially now that they are even reaching a place where they are actively removing and crippling their “pro” software.
      Well i will keep a full cracked copy with all the cloud functionality sledgehammered out of it on my systems just in case.
      Just give me the tool. If i want extra service ill pay for it when i need it. I’m not buying a powered drill on a subscription. I dont need useless updates if they coudl just make their stuff work before going on sale.

  • I miss when adobe would give you software on a disk and it was just yours until you upgrade. The subscription system is just there to make more money. I was fine when they had both, but then they took away the disk completely. 😒

  • Peter

    Here is the counter move from the PR department, trying to combat bad press with good press.

    Essentially they are announcing nothing at all – they are accepting applications for something they don’t even have yet. The last announcement of Photoshop for iPad was to deal with the success of Affinity Photo on iPad. It’s a good sign that they are apparently feeling the pressure from Affinity and other alternatives and that enough people are already actively moving away from Adobe to have them worried.

  • I will miss you Adobe! Ciao

  • No thanks! Bye 👎

  • Mike

    Why i started using luminar

  • If you want to create DVDs or Blurays with Adobe Software, then the last version to support that was CS6 (yep, not even any Creative Cloud versions) so access to past versions is essential. But fortunately I cancelled my subscription long ago, moved to alternatives and Adobe can suck it

    • Jerry

      Access to the CS6 versions was included in CC. That’s how I’ve been using Encore, until this announcement has now essentially rendered all my existing Encore project files useless if I want to stay legal.

  • Jesse Higgins

    Haha, none of these commenters read the actual article. Adobe’s not suing you, third parties could.

  • Ok, thanks for the clarification, for a moment I thought this was Adobe threatening to sue us, turns out they had 3d parties who might sue us, not Adobe themselves.

    “But to make things clear, it’s not Adobe who’s threatening to sue you. They have probably licensed tech from third-party companies in older versions of CC apps. “

    • Luuk.vanRiel

      Still, fuck adobe if they give companies information on their customers. We didnt sign no deals with adobes third party contractors.

  • Nope. Gave up on Adobe years ago. Never looked back.

  • informatimago

    This is bad PR for Adobe. This should be a warning to all commercial vendors, NOT to use patented libraries in their software! Finance and use free software instead!

  • fonydancer

    well i buy my s&t MC and still works fine…so CC can suck my… goals

  • fonydancer

    i use S&T MC version so CC can suck my…goals

  • Robot Kutya

    Wait! Isn’t Adobe responsible to selling a bundle licensed accessory to the users? The end users don’t have a chance to renew the licenses inside a big software. BTW how it can be, that a bundle licensed software get’s outdated? It’s like there is a game, that has a CD and music on it, and the game developer some years later sends an email that the music on the disk is out of license and crush all the CDs to avoid getting sued? I think in this case the developer is definitely the responsible for this case, because he’s the “dealer”…. or not? 🙂
    That will definitely cause to destroy everything in the informatics…make something, use it for some year and then destroy it because you don’t have license to use it, and get a new another one, and start it over…..thankfully there are huge collections of different kind of softwares for different kind of hardwares, and they are archived very well….

    • Kaouthia

      Except that in your example with the game, you’re buying a perpetual license. With Adobe Creative Cloud you’re renting a temporary license. 🙂

      • Luuk.vanRiel

        Then those shits at the top of adobe should not take away to just purchase the software as is.

  • Chia-P

    Good thing I’m not using CC.

  • PetaPixel banned me and had this same topic, so let me reply here.

    I’m pretty basic, all I use is LR 3, LR5 and an old copy of Elements for printing, so don’t require much.

    Adobe should replace the bad software with legal software. Sounds like a nice class action suit for Adobe selling something defective. We try to be legit and buy licensed software and we still get screwed.

  • Jul

    “and those third-party companies might go after you if you keep using them” – Fortunately that only applies to certain countries. I’m rather surprised that in the US it seems like customers can get sued for that. But on the other hand consumer right laws are rather non-existent there.

  • TPB

    If I’m using an old version which I downloaded by torrent, could I claim when they will take me to court that because I’m using unpaid version, we never had a contract?

    • Luuk.vanRiel

      Would be a valid case imo. I have a subscription but also using the pirated cracked version for legacy functionality. If they won’t support their professional customers there is always piracy to solve the problem Adobe created.

  • RightNow9435

    Try and make me, Adobe,lolll

  • Weskus

    This is getting interesting. How on earth can third party (Dolby) sue Adobe clients and there are lots of individual citizens around the globe, not just companies. if they sue, Adobe has given customer related data to the third party and that data contains probably which falls under EU GDPR. This leads to a possibility that EU starts watching very closely both companies actions, if not already.

    Would those companies take that risk? I think not, this is just Adobe’s action to mitigate its infringements during the lawsuit.

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