Adobe Sues Fashion Chain Over 'Pirated' Photoshop


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High street fashion chain Forever 21 is being sued by Adobe for allegedly using pirated copies of Photoshop.

 

The company could face a large fine if a court finds in favour of Adobe, which says the chain used the copies of Photoshop "even after being contacted by Adobe regarding the infringement".

 

The detailed lawsuit was filed this week and includes the registration numbers of the software products involved, plus dates on which the software was used.

 

Adobe says it is a case of "wilful, intentional and malicious copyright infringement" and is asking the court to issue an injunction and award a cash sum for lost revenue, court costs and additional damages.

 

It is unclear how Adobe discovered its software was allegedly being wrongly used by Forever 21, but in recent years it has actively encouraged people to turn in employers who are using pirated software.

 

Adobe says "it would be difficult to ascertain the amount of damages" needed, and that several hearings would be required to establish just how much the company has lost as a result of the breaches.

 

The case was filed in Calfornia and also alleges that Forever 21 - which has revenues of around $3.9bn (

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I can see Adobe winning this one, if Adobe for sure contacted them about the matter and they brushed it off. With a company that large, I'm sure they had to be running quite a few copies of the pirated version

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also copied 3D design software Autodesk and zip utility tool WinZip.

 

Why would you need to pirate WinZip let alone download it? :|

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Any company with that kind of revenue can afford to drop down $10 a month for some Photoshop.

I just did a quick search and found the cost to be 465.05 CHF per month, per licence. While that should still be affordable for such a company, it isn't exactly $10 per month. Maybe I'm reading the wrong section though?

EDIT: That's also just for photoshop, none of the other stuff.

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It's one thing for people to pirate software for their personal use, it's another entirely to use pirated software for commercial purposes. Further, to ignore Adobe after it had highlighted the issue is simply beyond the pale.

 

I just did a quick search and found the cost to be 465.05 CHF per month, per licence. While that should still be affordable for such a company, it isn't exactly $10 per month. Maybe I'm reading the wrong section though?

An individual licence is

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Any company with that kind of revenue can afford to drop down $10 a month for some Photoshop.

 

I'm not sure the photographers package sub license allows their usage, but I haven't really read up what the photo pack license allows

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I just did a quick search and found the cost to be 465.05 CHF per month, per licence. While that should still be affordable for such a company, it isn't exactly $10 per month. Maybe I'm reading the wrong section though?

EDIT: That's also just for photoshop, non of the other stuff.

 

Over here we have a Creative Cloud option for photography that includes Photoshop and Lightroom for $10/month. Not sure what it costs internationally:

https://creative.adobe.com/plans

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I just did a quick search and found the cost to be 465.05 CHF per month, per licence. While that should still be affordable for such a company, it isn't exactly $10 per month. Maybe I'm reading the wrong section though?

EDIT: That's also just for photoshop, non of the other stuff.

 

https://creative.adobe.com/plans/photography

 

it is awesome btw :)

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I'm not sure the photographers package sub license allows their usage, but I haven't really read up what the photo pack license allows

 

Oh good point, I was looking at individual plans and not the business rates!

 

Yes it's probably more expensive but still peanuts to a company with 4 billion in revenue.

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Right now, their IT Admin is having a severe pucker session.  ( * )


I constantly see evidence of piracy on craigslist.  The same guy or group doing it over and over again, every day.

I'd love to pull the plug on them, but I know MS could care less, they want the people who upload to everyone else.

Still it pisses me off.  They will sell an $80 pc from 5-6 years ago and will advertise it with Windows 8.1 & Office 2013 Pro Plus

I go on there a lot looking for good deals on ThinkPads and see those asshats constantly... dont even know why it bothers me.

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I highly doubt that if someone at forever 21 uses photoshop for commercial purposes .e.g graphics design team or something along those lines they would have a pirated copy of the software.

 

Its probably just on a PC in a certain store where an employee put the software there to fiddle around with or something.

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It's one thing for people to pirate software for their personal use, it's another entirely to use pirated software for commercial purposes.

 

Say, the next time you are in a store, shoplift something, ok. If you get caught, just tell the police that you were simply going to use the item for your "personal use".

 

Stealing is stealing. If it helps people feel better about themselves by coming up with some bogus rationalization to justify it, so be it. Thankfully, there are still enough people with integrity out there that keep companies such as Adobe in business. Good for Adobe and I hope they get every penny they are owed. (Y)

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I highly doubt that if someone at forever 21 uses photoshop for commercial purposes .e.g graphics design team or something along those lines they would have a pirated copy of the software.

 

Its probably just on a PC in a certain store where an employee put the software there to fiddle around with or something.

Oh really ?  The piracy started before the pay as you go policy - meaning - each license was several hundred dollars.  YOu dont think someone trying to impress their boss, or simply someone wanting to get kudos would offer to save the company a lot of money and boastfully claim "I can get it for free !" ?  

Adobe isnt going to waste money on their attorneys for a couple of licenses, the attorneys cost more than that in 1 day.

LOL - Adobe execs spend $100,000 on attorneys to bust a company because an employee "..put the software there to fiddle around with or something...."  ?  

:rolleyes:

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Say, the next time you are in a store, shoplift something, ok. If you get caught, just tell the police that you were simply going to use the item for your "personal use".

 

Stealing is stealing. If it helps people feel better about themselves by coming up with some bogus rationalization to justify it, so be it. Thankfully, there are still enough people with integrity out there that keep companies such as Adobe in business. Good for Adobe and I hope they get every penny they are owed. (Y)

You obviously can't relate to thug life and growing up in the hood.

We keep it gangsta. in reality or digitally.

$120 from me a year, or from you (no matter how special you feel), isn't going to keep adobe in business.

However. large business chains making billions of year in revenue, will.

There is a reason Adobe doesn't come after JimBob, but does go after businesses.

Adobe could easily make photoshop harder to crack if they really wanted to. They know what they're doing.

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The company I used to work for was hit with a licensing issue.  IBM's archaic license agreement for Lotus Notes is 1 license per CPU core.  This was obviously done before multicore CPUs were everywhere.

According to that clause, some IBM accounting rookie was pestering us to pay $400,000 in licenses....to make us current.

It was obvious we were trying to be legit, and did not know about this stupid method - but some rookie got his panties in a bunch @ IBM.

When our parent company reminded them that we spend about $3,000,000 every 4 years for hardware refreshes - they backed off....then we went to Dell servers.

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