Inducement To Piracy, Adobe Style 272
S Vulpy writes "A post at the Social Science Research Council's website talks about how piracy greases the wheels of the Adobe Creative Suite marketplace by making it easier to deal with Adobe breaking compatibility between versions. Quoting: '... such incompatibility doesn’t involve exotic functionality, just straight text layout into columns and boxes. The kind of stuff that has been core functionality of publishing software since the early 1990s. Translate this dilemma to Brazil or Russia, where incomes are a fraction that of the US and you get a very simple outcome: massive piracy of Adobe products. In fact, go through this process in the last month of a 4-year project on a deadline and one could understand becoming extremely sympathetic to such a perspective. This, as we’ve argued, is not a defect of the Adobe business model, it is the business model.'"
Soon (Score:4, Insightful)
Wasn't piracy always a part of Adobe's business? (Score:5, Insightful)
As an outsider looking in, I noticed Adobe never seemed to put any serious DRM on their software. Computer games put more effort into it than Photoshop ever did. I was always surprised how easy it was to install & use Adobe products with a single serial number used by thousands. I know they did make efforts to stop the distribution, but never as hard-core as Microsoft became with Office. And considering the prices they charged, I figured Adobe would.
Then it occurred to me after working with artists who trained on Adobe products (pirated in some cases), etc. that Adobe's _real_ market for the $1000+ titles are businesses: advertising companies, professional graphic designers, businesses, etc. Going after the hobbyist or the poor artists wasn't their style. And then it clicked: when the artists came to my company, they got the company to buy Adobe products. *THUNK!* The network effect [wikipedia.org]. If they can get more people used to using Adobe and associating certain high-value work with Adobe products, then the more likely they are to push for Adobe at work. And thus more money they can squeeze from businesses who make money.
So to me, allowing a certain low level amount of piracy was always part of Adobe's game.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is why I have given up on Adobe (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the world is overtaken by ants story... (Score:2, Insightful)
Piracy is not what drives the business model. Piracy is a variable that gets dealt with, and sometimes the best way to deal with it is through benign neglect, as is pointed out by the Microsoft model.
What you perceive in Adobe as being driven by the pirate, or you desire not to update, is simply a failure to understand that you are not the target market. The target market is not just one person, but the professional eco-system. And more important that the price at anytime, the solution provides the overall cheapest solution in time and payment for time, but in also professional and creative ability, which also leads to less time used, and more money saved.
Adobe strives to make sure that the value of the upgrade to the primary market is worth the upgrade. IE the sum of the additional features and efficiencies from creative to output are more valuable than the costs. There are complaints everytime, but by those that don't appreciate the business model for a large variety of reasons. But if you carefully notice, the program continues to gain prominence in the target marketplace at the expense of nearly other product and workflow.
The question of piracy is important, especially in the key target markets, because there are many many people who exploit the Adobe tools and make money off them who would rather not pay. It is also true that there is more products, especially in the Photo arena that are getting play. Not so much GIMP, but products that provide frames and retro and non-digital feel to files. And programs that came with cameras and the smart phone. But none of these are going to be replacements for the target market that Adobe and actually the market, has come to depend on.
Re:Acrobat (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait. Microsoft did a major change in their software. After upgrading to the new version of Word you discovered that Adobe's four year old software didn't know how to talk to Microsoft's brand new software. And this is Adobe's fault?
Re:How is an empire in decline different from ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider also the Tacoma Narrows fiasco, now some decades ago, which in my opinion is not a mistake that competent engineers make, but one due to social promotion at the highest levels of our education system
I know you're young, but the social promotion you're talking about didn't start until the 70's and wasn't commonplace until the 90's (I remember kids flunking often enough). The Tacoma Narrows Bridge went wacky in 1940. The engineers who designed and built that bridge were probably taught in 1910-1935. They're the great-great-grandparents of the spoiled "everyone wins" generation.