I’m friends with quite a few graphic designers, so I got to watch the excitement as my Facebook feed filled with people excitedly saying you can now get Adobe Creative Suite 2 (CS2) for free. This was a puzzling but welcome move. I decided not to write about it because it seemed to good to be true.
Turns out, I was right.
The full story is that Adobe had recently shut down the activation servers for CS2. As this would cause issues for any existing CS2 users who needed to re-install, Adobe made available a version that doesn’t require an activation server. It did, however, require a serial number, which Adobe provided. However, you were only supposed to use the serial number if you already had a valid license.
I’m not clear how Adobe didn’t think this through. The “post the SNs for anyone with a (free) Adobe ID to see” solution for the problem was bound to cause a viral storm, as we saw. In fact, there was enough traffic generated to take Adobe’s site down multiple times yesterday. Do it yourself DoS? Nice.
Adobe is now saying is that those who took advantage of this loophole are in fact naughty people who should feel bad. While I’m not going into the legalities of the issue, I will get into the technical aspect, which is simply this — good luck with that, Adobe. The software is out there, the codes are out there, and there is no longer an authorization scheme to enforce the stance being taken.
For those of you who want to respect Adobe’s wishes, know that there are oodles of free alternatives for most of the apps in CS2.
Adobe, wish for one of these once you’re at it.
Source: Fell Pony Society
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