
Adobe deactivates all Venezuelan accounts - sndpsy
https://helpx.adobe.com/la/x-productkb/policy-pricing/executive-order-venezuela.html
======
CM30
What makes this even worse is that this is only a huge issue because Adobe
moved to the whole 'Creative Cloud' thing rather than the old 'buy each
product outright' model. With the old model, it wouldn't hurt these creators
all that much if their accounts got deactivated, since the software would just
not get updates.

Now on the other hand... they're screwed. It's a 'brilliant' example of how
these 'cloud' based services are a bad deal for the user, because it puts them
at the risk of getting locked out their own purchases due to legal hassles
like this.

~~~
bcheung
Yeah, I got sick of Adobe's subscription model. Every release it seems like PS
gets slower and slower without adding any features of value to me. I hate that
if I want to have a certain combination of 2 or 3 apps I have to pay for
basically everything which includes 80% of stuff I don't need. Paying $600/yr
for something I only occasionally use a few times a month is a joke. I've
since switched to Affinity.

~~~
arthurcolle
How do you like the competitor offering so far?

~~~
pier25
I'm not parent but I'm still looking for a vector graphics replacement for
Illustrator.

Sketch, Designer, etc, are all pretty crippled when it comes to working with
groups instead of layers. Many people have asked for group isolation mode in
Designer for years, but it's not really a priority for Serif.

[https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/1640-ad-
is...](https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/1640-ad-isolation-
mode/)

I tried developing a script for Sketch but the SDK doesn't provide the needed
API to implement it properly and quite frankly Sketch is super slow once you
work on complex projects.

The only software I've found that does groups well is a little software called
Amadine, but it's still not very mature.

The team that develops PixelMator promised a vectors graphics software but are
too busy with PixelMator Pro.

I haven't used Corel Draw in almost 20 years but now that they have a mac
verson I will give it a try.

Affinity Photo is a great replacement for Photoshop though.

~~~
bcheung
I've had a horrible time with finding good vector software for my needs,
especially since my requirements tend towards needing it to create physical
assets in the real world (laser cutting) or the basis for game assets.

There isn't any good constraint based / procedural vector software. Best I've
able to find for my needs is Fusion 360 but it's really for 3D not for 2D. I
want things to reflow automatically based on parameterized constraints and
nothing does that except for Fusion 360 and/or OpenSCAD but those are both
horrible for 2D vector.

I've even resorted to use React and SVG to dynamically generate vectored laser
cut designs. [https://github.com/brennancheung/lasercut-react-
svg/blob/mas...](https://github.com/brennancheung/lasercut-react-
svg/blob/master/src/HoleGuide.js)

If anyone has any recommendations I'd love to hear them.

~~~
archi42
I'm quite happy with Autodesk Inventor. Though I get it a the student rate
(for free), and would not pay for it since I just design simple things for 3D
printing.

~~~
arthurcolle
What is the process by which one goes from a cad file to actually something
that can be 3d printed?

I recently got a new ipad pro and got this app sketchr3d and I was blown away
by how intuitive it is to design really sophisticated structures. I tried
blender on and off like 4 times over 5 years and found it basically impossible
to use.

After making some really cool designs in s3d I started to wonder how easy it
is to just print it with some kind of decent 3d printer model.

Is it really plug and play/drag and drop your file?

~~~
kd5bjo
I haven’t played with 3d printers in a while, but my understanding is that
they’ve pretty much standardized on the STL file format to describe prints.
CAD packages should be able to export it, and printer software can read it.

Other than that, there’s likely a bunch of parameters that control the actual
printing process— there are a lot of tradeoffs to make between print speed,
material usage, part strength, etc. The printer software will ask you about
these before starting a print.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_(file_format)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_\(file_format\))

~~~
colejohnson66
> I haven’t played with 3d printers in a while, but my understanding is that
> they’ve pretty much standardized on the STL file format to describe prints.

Not quite. The STL is the model. A slicer “slices” the model into tens to
thousands of layers and creates a GCode file that tells the printer exactly
what to do.

------
djsumdog
Back in high school, my best friend wanted to have a legal copy of Photoshop
(we were broke kids and pirated everything back then). He eventually found a
copy of Photoshop 2 on eBay for cheap, got it and it's CD key and then
purchased the upgrades to eventually get to Photoshop 5. I think he was able
to pull it off for under $100 or pretty close (I think it retailed for like
$300~$400 back then?).

I too miss when you owned a copy of the software, licensed to a single
machine, that was on a physical transferable medium. Jetbrains at least
allowed a fallback license, which Adobe doesn't have (and honestly that's
because Jetbrains couldn't get away with that shit with a tech focused
customer base).

Take about crippling certain business in Venezuela. All this is going to do is
encourage piracy (and potentially malware).

~~~
bitwize
If he bought it off eBay, it's not a legal copy in the USA. Software is
licensed, not sold; and software licenses are nontransferrable.

~~~
viraptor
That doesn't seem to be the case since 2009:
[https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=148be5c9-c0d4...](https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=148be5c9-c0d4-4ff7-8dbd-d15884250729)
(or at least it was properly tested then)

Has anything changed since then? It seems Adobe CC was created not long after,
so... maybe not a coincidence?

~~~
bitwize
That decision was overturned on appeal. Vernor v. Autodesk was the specific
case I had in mind.

~~~
elliekelly
A (somewhat) serious question: since Autodesk, Adobe, etc. can use
Shrinkwrap/Clickwrap/Browserwrap to distinguish between a sale and a license
what's stopping users from doing it right back?

What if my browser sent custom headers to Adobe saying that by serving me a
webpage Adobe has agreed to sell me, not license, a copy of each new edition
of any software they release for $1 in perpetuity and that a breach of
contract would result in liquidated damages of $10,000 per undelivered copy.

If I'm bound by Adobe's Terms of Service before I've had a chance to read them
by nature of the my browser's request then surely Adobe would be similarly
bound to my Terms of Servers(TM) by nature of their response?

~~~
gamblor956
Wouldn't work, as custom headers are not reviewed by a person at any point.

 _If I 'm bound by Adobe's Terms of Service before I've had a chance to read
them by nature of the my browser's request then surely Adobe would be
similarly bound to my Terms of Servers(TM) by nature of their response? _

You're not bound until you have had the opportunity to review the TOS. Meaning
that merely accessing a page from somewhere else (i.e., a link or url) isn't
enough--but once you're on (or revisiting) their website, if you interact with
it in any matter beyond visiting the TOS page the TOS would apply even if you
chose not to read it.

------
bovermyer
Worth noting that there's a decent alternative to Photoshop, Illustrator, and
InDesign from Affinity:

[https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/](https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/)

Affinity is European, and thus not affected by the executive order. Also, all
of their products are buy-once-own-forever.

~~~
e40
I would love a real alternative to Lightroom. I'm stuck on version 6, since I
refused to go to the rent it model.

~~~
DHPersonal
I think Capture One Pro is superior to Lightroom in everything but the library
system that is offered with Lightroom, though what is provided in Capture One
Pro is still very good.

[https://www.captureone.com/en/store](https://www.captureone.com/en/store)

~~~
ijpoijpoihpiuoh
I always found the library system in Lightroom to be painful only because of
how slow it is. It's hard to imagine enough features to make up for a UI that
routinely takes >1s to render images onto the page.

~~~
StavrosK
That's what got me to switch off Lightroom, and Capture One's excellent other
features kept me on the latter. Highly recommended.

------
durpleDrank
[https://www.gimp.org](https://www.gimp.org)

[https://inkscape.org](https://inkscape.org)

[http://mypaint.org](http://mypaint.org)

[https://krita.org/en/](https://krita.org/en/)

[https://www.blender.org/features/video-
editing/](https://www.blender.org/features/video-editing/)

[https://kdenlive.org/en/](https://kdenlive.org/en/)

[https://www.audacityteam.org](https://www.audacityteam.org)

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
Inkscape is one of the best examples of open source done well (make sure to
use the latest version if your distribution bundles an old one); even when I
still had (pirated) versions of Adobe I preferred Inkscape over the Adobe
offerings.

Audacity is another great program from experience, and the success of Blender
speaks for itself.

Gimp, on the other hand, is a UX nightmare. There's a tutorial on how to draw
a line, _and you 'll need it_, because it requires a non-discoverable keyboard
shortcut. Its feature set is either ages behind Photoshop, or there but non-
discoverable due to bad UX, and the UX makes basic tasks excruciatingly
painful.

Photoshop and IrfanView are the two tools I miss most from Windows, the latter
even more than the former. Trivial tasks like "crop picture in clipboard and
put it back on the clipboard/into a file" are pure pain on Linux, because the
only thing that at least _works_ reliably is Gimp with its horrible UX. One of
the "lighter" (Paint.NET equivalent) tools left parts of its UI in my saved
image. Others don't support the clipboard. IrfanView with Wine just isn't the
same either.

~~~
klingonopera
IrfanView is truly one of the greatest softwares ever. IMHO, it's the VLC for
images.

Anything comparable on Linux?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Nomacs. Not quite there, but feels comparably lightweight.
[https://nomacs.org/](https://nomacs.org/)

------
sndpsy
The executive order[1] targets the Government of Venezuela [2] not all
Venezuelan companies and individuals. But I guess it's easier to deactivate
everyone than try and verify if the account is related to the Government of
Venezuela.

[1][https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/...](https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/13884.pdf) [2] the term ‘‘Government of
Venezuela’’ includes the state and Government of Venezuela, any political
subdivision, agency, or instrumentality thereof, including the Central Bank of
Venezuela and Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA), any person owned or
controlled, directly or indirectly, by the foregoing, and any person who has
acted or purported to act directly or indirectly for or on behalf of, any of
the foregoing, including as a member of the Maduro regime. For the purposes of
section 2 of this order, the term ‘‘Government of Venezuela’

~~~
dragonwriter
> not all Venezuelan companies and individuals.

Er, given the structure of the socialist system in Venezuela, which companies
or individuals can a US entity be sure are neither “owned or controlled,
directly or indirectly” by the government or any instrumentality or agency
thereof, including the central bank or national oil company, nor have ever
acted directly or indirectly for or on behalf of any of those things?

What are the expected consequences for a private US firm applying the order
too broadly? Too narrowly?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _What are the expected consequences for a private US firm applying the order
> too broadly? Too narrowly?_

Broadly, you lose customers. Narrowly, you’re fighting criminal charges for
sanctions evasion.

~~~
dragonwriter
Right: to make the implication of the (most rhetorical) question more clear:
the nature of the situation and the structure of the order and it's
consequences very much encourage exactly what Adobe did, even if one might
argue it is strictly not required.

------
nixpulvis
And my music library slowly disappears from Apple Music (or Spotify) with
every passing beat.

And my chat service (iMessage) won't let me talk with outside people... yes I
know SMS still works.

And my photos slowly become fuzzy, surely this is a bug when it happens,
right!?

And my backups are in proprietary encryption file systems. Well I changed that
by moving off macOS at this point.

What's next, I don't even want to imagine anymore.

~~~
scarface74
_Your_ music library doesn’t disappear - if you bought music from iTunes. The
music you bought would/could be on your computer. If you bought it within the
last decade, it would be DRM free.

~~~
djsumdog
iTunes has had bugs that try to remove duplicates and end up deleting peoples'
own remixed material.

Amazon discovered they didn't have the rights to a book in Canada and deleted
it off people devices. The book? 1984.

I think the iTunes issues have been fixed, but it's still stupid to not have
your own backup independent of stuff accessible by "cloud" services.

I buy everything I can off bandcamp and download it to my machine. I
occasionally buy off Amazon music, but I really hate it when that's the only
option an artists has and would prefer to buy/rip a physical CD at a show. I
keep my music on a 512GB microSD card (crazy these things exist now) and I
always keep my own backups of my own content; buy DRM free whenever I can on
Gog/Humble over Steam.

I prefer to have things I own, not licenses to software and content that can
be revoked at any time.

~~~
scarface74
Amazon’s books contain DRM. iTunes music that you bought within the last
decade was DRM free and could be played and backed up anywhere. Apple couldn’t
“revoke” DRM free music that you backed up.

~~~
awayfromhomenow
not all of Amazons books contain DRM. There's a big movement (mostly authors
of Baean Books, afaik) that ask that the books be published DRM-free.

~~~
WalterBright
The people who publish books on Amazon have the option of them being DRM-free
or not. The books I publish on AMZN are DRM-free.

------
totaldude87
>>We are unable to issue refunds. Executive order 13884, orders the cessation
of all activity with the entities including no sales, service, support,
refunds, credits, etc.

this is ridiculous.. No refunds? if their cycle starts on 1st of Oct, they
have paid for entire month(let alone annual subscriptions) but cant use any
and cant get a refund..

~~~
khawkins
Can we put this into perspective? The Venezuelan economy is in shambles, a
hyperinflationary crisis that has forced millions out of the country as food
is so scarce people are forced to eat zoo animals and pets. The government is
illegitimate and destroying aid trucks trying to bring food and medical
supplies to their people.

But here we are, complaining that the well-connected wealthy at the top of
this mess can't get a refund for their purchase of Adobe Photoshop. Given that
Maduro has nationalized nearly all of the major corporations in the nation,
you necessarily can't be wealthy enough to own this software without being an
open ally.

This action hurts people in that country, but it's supposed to hurt because
until they get rid of their self-destructive government things won't begin to
get better.

~~~
dragonwriter
> But here we are, complaining that the well-connected wealthy at the top of
> this mess can't get a refund for their purchase of Adobe Photoshop.

I'd be more concerned that, e.g.,non-regime-aligned publishers can't continue
_using_ Creative Cloud that they've paid for than that anyone can't get a
refund.

~~~
nojvek
It’s still a problem because Adobe stole money from their users and didn’t
deliver on their promise.

Sure it’s in the name of Executive order but still leaves a bad taste. It says
you can’t trust Adobe.

------
lentil_soup
As a Venezuelan this is very scary. Not so much losing Adobe, as we can get
around that, but the precedent it sets with other US companies.

Losing Twitter would be devastating, Venezuelans rely on Twitter to get their
local news, it has effectively replaced traditional media as those have been
taken over by the Government. People rely on networks of freelance journalists
and smaller media companies to get what is happening locally. Losing Twitter
would boost the Maduro regime.

Also, losing banking access (as it already happened with Transferwise) would
plunge people further into poverty. A LOT of people rely on their friends and
family abroad sending them money to survive, others work remotely for
companies outside the country so they can earn in a foreign currency. A big
part of the economy now functions via bank transfers abroad, you can literally
buy in almost any shop now with a USD bank transfer. Losing that would wreck
what's left of the economy.

Maduro must fall, but this will only empower him.

~~~
113
Do you live in Venezuela?

~~~
lentil_soup
Not anymore but do visit often. My family is still there, though

~~~
around_here
Sounds like we’ve found a wealthy Venezuelan. Madurai has the support of the
working class, which means he has the support of the country.

------
gibolt
I can't imagine how many art/film creators just lost their current/future
livelihood. This stymies the growth of so many individuals, some of whom may
have eventually migrated to the U.S. and applied their extraordinary skills to
support its economy.

Pirating looks like the only option, if that is even still possible with all
of the features now tied to the cloud.

~~~
orvtech
How many of them can actually buy a license with a national average salary of
$17 a month?

~~~
gibolt
This affects ALL of their products. Adobe has a huge suite of
free/trial/student tiers as well, which also are rendered unavailable by this
decision.

~~~
orvtech
Students will still have access to the software via other means as usual, the
real impact would be on cloud services I guess

~~~
penagwin
> Will still have access to the software via other means as usual

Piracy? Surely this doesn't count as a "solution". Just because you can evade
a ban doesn't mean that they "still have access" \- I mean they do but it's
not legal.

~~~
nybble41
> but it's not legal

Not in the U.S., no, but is it illegal in Venezuela? They are under no
obligation to recognize U.S. copyright claims. Or any copyright claims, for
that matter. And why would they, given that the U.S. is enforcing sanctions
against them?

~~~
penagwin
I was wondering this yesterday too - Is it stealing if it's not for sale (so
there is no lost revenue)?

My gut reaction is that if Venezuela is apart of any of the international
trade laws then it'd still be illegal but there's essentially no way in
practice you'd get in trouble for it (Assuming you're a Venezuelan citizen and
you aren't like blatantly selling it in the street or something).

~~~
nybble41
It's not "stealing" regardless of whether the software is for sale. Whether
it's illegal in Venezuela is a question of local Venezuelan law. If Venezuela
is part of a treaty which requires them to enforce copyright laws then they
can simply withdraw from that treaty; it's unlikely that they would be
benefitting much from it at this point. Or, without withdrawing altogether,
they might be able to get an international ruling that voiding U.S. copyright
claims within their jurisdiction is a justified response to the U.S. trade
sanctions—other countries have succeeded in that approach before. (I forget
where but IIRC it had something to do with U.S. restrictions against online
gambling, which is a lesser provocation than this general trade embargo.)

------
bluesign
> You’ve charged me, when will I get my refund?

> We are unable to issue refunds. Executive order 13884, orders the cessation
> of all activity with the entities including no sales, service, support,
> refunds, credits, etc.

~~~
jazzyjackson
well that's convenient for adobe's bottom line

~~~
nicholsonpk
Sure, today. I think Adobe would have preferred to get their continued monthly
revenue from those users in the long run. I don't think they're quoting the
law here because it benefits them.

~~~
spurdoman77
Yeah true. Though they could have made a strict verifying process so that they
ensure only non-govermental people can be their customers. However that would
also be very expensive to implement.

~~~
TeMPOraL
If they could/wanted to do that, they could also use it to not deactivate non-
governmental accounts in the first place.

(I can believe they could have wanted it, but it would take time, and I
suppose getting compliant with an executive order of the President is
something you want to do as fast as possible.)

------
FillardMillmore
If I were a foreign company, stories like this would make me hesitant to do
business with American software business. Granted, many of you have pointed
out that Adobe's model (Creative Cloud) is a contributing factor to the degree
this is harmful, but the driving force here is still American policy.

~~~
commandlinefan
> American policy

And… which other government has never made a surprising decision?

~~~
hrktb
Except the US government doesn’t massively run on Indian or German software.

I imagine the day Microsoft is dragged into this. Even with the current
version or windows/office/exchange server/sharepoint still running “offline”,
imagine not getting security updates, no support, no additional support
anymore.

In a way this is a threat that always existed, and many govs have tried
serveral attempts to get away from MS and other foreign companies, but up
until now the threat was hypothetic, and the cost seemed tremendous in
comparison. But not anymore I guess.

------
oblib
Wow... this is a completely bullshit maneuver by the U.S. gov that will
certainly make anyone anywhere outside the U.S hesitant to purchase from
Adobe.

Aside from that, the only reason our Gov meddles with Venezuela is they have
so much oil. We wouldn't care what their gov did if they paid our US oil
corporations a cash tribute for every barrel pumped and sold.

Dragging Adobe into that this way is a frightening precedent that may well
come back to bite us all in the ass here in the U.S.

------
mark_l_watson
Wow, I bet Venezuela wishes as a country that they did not announce the
intention to sell oil in any currency. No one, apparently, is allowed to stop
using the US dollar as the reserve currency.

As a reminder: early in George W Bush’s presidency, Venezuela, Iran, and
Russia all announced that they would sell oil in any currency and almost
immediately they were labeled “axis of evil.”

We in the USA benefit from owning the reserve currency it I am always
surprised at how long we have kept this advantage.

~~~
antientropic
GWB's "axis of evil" was Iran, Iraq and North Korea, not the countries you
mentioned.

------
rotrux
I am confused. Executive Order 13884 concerns only the government of Venezuela
& about 150 specific people/companies in Venezuela. Am I misreading this order
or did Adobe?

PDF: [https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/...](https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/13884.pdf)

~~~
skissane
Probably, it is easier and safer for them to ban Venezuela completely, than to
determine whether or not one of their customers is one of those 150.

But, they don't want to say that. They want to blame it all on the government.

A lot of companies do this. Claim that their own business decisions about how
to implement government regulations were forced by the government, when in
truth it is their own commercial decisions around cost of compliance and risk
appetite which were determinative, not the government regulation alone.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
I mean, what do you expect them to do? If it costs them more to serve a
country than business from the country is worth due to regulations, do you
expect them to keep serving the country at a loss? Is the regulation somehow
not at fault? It's not like Adobe wants to stop taking people's money in
exchange for the service.

~~~
skissane
They could just come out and say something like: "Although the sanctions only
strictly speaking apply to the government and 150 individuals/entities, we
have determined that the financial cost and legal risk of determining whether
a customer is one of the sanctioned entities is commercially unfeasible,
therefore we have decided that the only commercially feasible way for us to
implement the sanctions is to block the country of Venezuela entirely."

i.e. Do the same thing they are doing now, just be more open and honest about
their reasons.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Although the sanctions only strictly speaking apply to the government and
> 150 individuals/entities,

They officially apply to anyone who has ever, directly or indirectly, done
anything on behalf of the government, or of those identified individuals and
entities. So, if they made your presentation, it would be an inaccurate
minimization of the plain language of the executive order.

------
rhamzeh
It's not a huge deal if this only blocks people from accessing Adobe Creative
Cloud.

But this essentially blocks people who have purchased content from hundreds of
other parties. Adobe is the global guardian of most of the DRM-ed ebook
ecosystem, controlling everything that's not Amazon or Apple.

What happens if a person has bought hundreds of Adobe DRM-ed ebooks from
random bookstores? They can't access _any_ of their legally purchased
material? Them reading is now illegal?

This is shitty situation we have cornered ourselves into. The global digital
ecosystem put it's entire trust into American companies, and it's slowly
reaping what it sowed.

This is a good time as any to link to [Defective by Design](1)

[1] [https://www.defectivebydesign.org/](https://www.defectivebydesign.org/)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _It 's not a huge deal if this only blocks people from accessing Adobe
> Creative Cloud._

It is a huge deal, as remarked elsewhere in the thread, because given Adobe's
near-monopoly on the graphics design market, this essentially kills several
industries in the country.

~~~
rhamzeh
I misspoke, I did not mean that as a whole, I only meant that in terms of the
availability of legal and libre alternatives for that market (they may not be
as convenient to use or available in a single package, but allow you to create
roughly the same things).

For books, you have _no_ legal way of reading those books.

Even books by legendary freedom icons are not available DRM-Free. I
encountered multiple times, last time was after spending hours while trying to
purchase a certain book by an infamous author. No seller had this book
available DRM-Free.

It's insane that knowledge is locked behind whether a single corporation
decides you're worthy of reading or not.

* Situation in public libraries is not much better with OverDrive/Adobe being the legal overlords and guardians of the entire global market.

------
sarcasmatwork
Good example why apps or games "in the cloud" is not a good idea. There is
Photoshop portable, plus CS6 suite still works offline.

~~~
birdyrooster
You could have a perpetual license to content that is hosted in the cloud by
one or more providers.

~~~
yellowapple
That perpetual license would mean bunk if you're suddenly prohibited from
accessing that content (or more specifically: a provider is prohibited from
allowing you to access that content) by an Executive Order.

~~~
birdyrooster
A perpetual license would still activate the software you had received prior
to having access prohibited. That is the issue in question. People have loaded
software on their machines and they cannot use it. You are bringing up another
important aspect of reproduction and the importance of maintaining access to
software installers, but that is a different conversation.

This is how Steam works for example.

------
qwerty456127
BTW sanctions like this seem to be a good thing for the free software world.
As soon as sanctions (even though much more moderate) have been deployed
against Russia it has started an extensive campaign to replace commercial
software with free alternatives in many places. E.g. many PostgreSQL jobs have
emerged as well as some traction in ditching MS Office for LibreOffce. Most of
the people still use pirated software there (and, I believe, in Venezuela as
well) but as free software matures people are turning to it instead.

------
StavrosK
I recently had PayPal disable my merchant account because I logged in funny (I
was on a trip and something was tripped because of the different login
region), and now this news. The world has become way too centralized, we
should start favoring the old models (pay for something and use it forever, no
phoning home, etc).

Luckily, there are some great alternatives in this particular space (Affinity
Photo, DaVinci Resolve, etc), and others (e.g. GOG for games). Hopefully, if
we support those monetization models, others will follow suit.

Coincidentally, since I'm not sure I'll be able to ever get my PayPal account
back (I can't prove the physical address since the company hasn't been there
for a while), does anyone know of a good cryptocurrency payment processor?

------
ris
It is _terrifying_ the amount of power Adobe have to lock the human population
out of their work. I don't understand how companies don't see this as a huge
liability to their large volume of assets kept in Adobe formats.

~~~
aeternum
There are quite a few 3rd party apps that can open PSD format files.

I'd be more concerned about other SaaS companies. For example: using Google's
GSuite for e-mail and all document storage. Or imagine using Okta / Onelogin
for company-wide user management and having all your user accounts disappear.
Or a VOIP provider and having none if your phones work.

------
clamprecht
From a comment on reddit: "los narcos ya no podrán usar photoshop" (now the
narcos can't use photoshop).

[https://www.reddit.com/r/vzla/comments/den9r5/adobe_cierra_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/vzla/comments/den9r5/adobe_cierra_operaciones_con_cuentas_venezolanas/)

~~~
meiraleal
Mind you, the biggest producer and seller of drugs in South America is still
the longtime partner (or vassal) of America: Colombia.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think they may have meant the narcotics _police_.

------
nullc
It'll be interesting to see if Adobe is subject to and loses lawsuits outside
of the US for this. (And perhaps in the US too, considering Section 1(c) of
the order specifically says it doesn't apply to any contract or license that
predated the order)

Presumably they have a lot of assets outside of the US which could be taken to
recoup losses here.

Adobe is an unethical company that should have had its charter revoked almost
a decade ago ago for its participation in the multi-billion dollar unlawful
wage fixing scheme. It's hard to feel bad on Adobe's behalf for difficult
situation created by the confluence of their user-hostile licensing practices
and US foreign policy.

~~~
t0astbread
Wage fixing scheme?

~~~
nullc
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation)

------
olivermarks
There are a lot of design companies running CS4 (the last DVD based software)
on El Capitain, the last version of the Mac OS that runs it. Adobe make
efforts to render the serial number checks a problem, particularly for CS3, to
encourage upgrades to their rental model. The era of students learning on
pirated Adobe products and 'growing' into consumers of their products is over
though. I really miss the Kai's Power Tools era when Adobe was an interesting
and innovative platform company [http://kai.sub.blue](http://kai.sub.blue)

------
rahimnathwani
The executive order they reference seems to prohibit giving money or stuff to
the Venezuelan government or those associated with it.

Where does it prohibit trading with individuals and businesses that aren't
affiliated with the government?

If Adobe is just stopping everything as it's hard to know if someone is
affiliated with the government, then that seems like a reasonable choice. But
then if you're just random individual they're refusing to give you a refund
when there's no law stopping them.

If I've understood things correctly, then they're refusing refunds to people
who are entitled to them.

------
szermer
Adobe missed a huge opportunity to 'fail safe' and provide their products free
to existing customers in Venezuela. They have the IP range... just whitelist
them and declare their accounts free.

~~~
dangoor
Their message said they're not providing access to free services either,
though I don't know if that's because they _can't_ or because they won't for
some reason.

------
firekvz
Transferwise has also announced today via email that the will not longer offer
their services.

[https://i.redd.it/jxqfc4c1z4r31.png](https://i.redd.it/jxqfc4c1z4r31.png)

------
tibbydudeza
The lesson is not to trust any US or foreign based cloud service .. they can
arbitrarily suspend your data and service at whims of politicians.

Host it yourself or with a local service provider in your own country.

------
downandout
All this is going to do is push Venezuelan users to pirate the software,
through torrents or other means. This actually would provide some economic
benefit to Adobe. At least some of the Venezuelan users that pirate their
tools will wind up collaborating with users in countries where Adobe can
charge. Ultimately that will result in Adobe making more money than they would
if the tools simply ceased to exist entirely in Venezuela.

------
ricardobeat
> We apologize for the inconvenience.

That's all you get after paying hundreds, or thousands, for a 'cloud' service
that used to be standalone software.

------
anovikov
Of course no one is using paid software in countries like this. Why would
they? I saw big render farms in Russia with multimillion dollar turnover that
use Adobe products downloaded from torrents. I had a client who had massive
rendering needs, and AfterEffects license prohibits renders for other people
so i asked them how do they go about licensing, they basically didn't
understand my question. After some emails exchange, it boiled down to 'maybe
that is a concern for Americans, but we are a Russian company and we're in
Russia, so you can be rest assured you won't have a problem if you just
offload your client's workload to us'. They were most probably right, while i
didn't dare to try. None of their previous clients even asked about that. And
you are speaking of Venezuela.

People outside of the Western states don't buy software. They don't need to.
And their culture is strongly against it (someone who buys something he could
safely steal instead, is seen as a loser in Russia).

------
teekert
Adobe is not a nice company. In my country subscriptions can never last more
than a year, after that you get the right to cancel every month. I took me 25
min and speaking to many Indian help-desk engineers in English before I could
cancel my account. For me that was not a problem but many dutch people don't
even speak English.

------
pedasmith
I just read the executive order. For a programmer, I think I'm pretty good at
reading government-ese, but wow! given the words in the order, I'm not quite
sure how that translates into Adobe not being able to offer their cloud.

Can anyone with more experience translate the order?

------
olliej
Part of this is a direct result of the relentless move to annoying "cloud"
only apps, but the other part is the "we reserve the right to discontinue your
account at any time for any reason" T&Cs that all these apps come with.
Especially when in conjunction with patents that cover the novel concept of
file formats.

More broadly there's a long term cost inflicted by the US gov on US companies
- as time goes by this is going to discourage purchasing US software,
especially that backed by cloud services. I mean take any of that software
that isn't "cloud" software, but does use remote DRM enforcement - should
those "can I use this software" servers also start rejecting connections from
Venezuela or what have you?

------
yuliyp
How does this actually fit with what the order says. It's supposed to affect
people working with the regime, not tens of millions of people. Is this Adobe
just trying to say "fuck you" to a whole country, or are their lawyers just
really confused (or am I?)?

------
mrandish
Creative Cloud apps only need to phone home for activation monthly (at least
it was that way early last year). Impacted users just need to get a new Adobe
ID and purchase a prepaid 1 yr sub to their apps using a Gmail address and VPN
(if Adobe is checking IP). Then just get on a VPN once a month to let it phone
home and otherwise block internet access for those apps.

Also, it's possible that the activation servers don't even check IP. Companies
just don't want to get fined by the govt. There's no incentive for them to go
beyond the letter of law in checking. It may be as simple as saying you're
somewhere else when signing up.

------
adg29
Similar to how Adobe decided to ban users from Venezuela from using their
software, Oracle has now canceled contracts with partners in Venezuela due to
Executive Order 13884. [https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/oracle-
cancel...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/oracle-cancels-
venezuela-partner-contracts-citing-us-sanctions/)

------
ur-whale
Yay for cloud computing: no cookie for you today coz we don't like you no
more.

------
mikorym
Talking about a subscription model, my ideal music streaming subscription
would be:

1) Pay a fixed amount per month (like Spotify, Apple Music, et al.).

2) Take your amount of seconds listened and divide accross the artists you
listened to (unlike Spotify et al.; they pool _all_ plays across _all_
subscribers).

3) No free tier. Nada.

4) Maybe get special offers on live events and merchandise. The artists will
be making their money there; live performances is what brings home the bacon.
But at least, unlike Spotify et al., if you listen to only one song the whole
month then that artist gets your full $5 and not Justina Biebergrande.

And that's it.

------
o_p
Welp, time to pirate Photoshop

~~~
e40
The problem is finding a version that doesn't have malware in it. Or, so I've
heard.

~~~
nobleach
I've wondered about this. For the past 10 years, I've worked for various
companies that have purchased licenses for me. I was certain there were still
torrents out there, even though the actual programs are "rentables". But that
whole scene is just a crypto-mining nightmare, I've heard.

~~~
tim333
On torrent tracker sites the same torrents have often been up for quite a
while with user comment so you can get an idea if they are ok or not, I've
heard.

------
hayksaakian
Keep in mind Adobe owns many other companies and brands

How does this affect Magento for example?

------
levosmetalo
Well, if the people don't even get a refund for what they already paid for, I
guess that gives them moral right not to respect any intellectual property of
Adobe either, just pirate anything they need.

------
Scapeghost
To think that someday Facebook, Google, Apple etc could also just deactivate
all accounts from a specific country, leading to people losing access to
everything they do on any connected computing device...

------
dingle_thunk
Why does CC need to do this, but Office 365 and G Suite don't?

------
tomc1985
Live by the cloud, die by the cloud

------
hans_castorp
Another good reason to avoid any business with companies vrom the USA as long
as politics are done by rolling a dice and then twittering about the result.

------
Taniwha
So "we're cancelling your account and not giving you a refund for what you've
paid for and we're not providing"

Seems pretty immoral if you ask me

------
notarized_off
This couldn't happen to any/all software vendors/clients using Apple's
notarization service and various app store models, surely!?

Heavens to Murgatroyd.

------
nthnclrk
Can anyone weigh in on why they could not just move these subscriptions to a
non-US Adobe entity and continue to transact accordingly?

------
mjdude
For those that are looking for an alternative, humble bundle have a bundle
right now which includes paintshop pro ultimate among other comparable adobe
products.

See: [https://www.humblebundle.com/software/painter-create-with-
co...](https://www.humblebundle.com/software/painter-create-with-confidence)

------
oikos
My relationship with Adobe went from love to hate when they bought up
Macromedia and stopped developing FreeHand in 2003. I'm still using it and
won't ever pay for any of their other products. Venezuelans will just have to
give up cloud and Adobe can't do much about anything else.

------
droithomme
This is a wholly toxic situation for companies anywhere thinking of buying US
connected software where the person lives in a country that might at any point
become persona non grata in the US and put on some embargo list.

Safe prediction is that in the future no software or technology purchased will
have its origin in the US.

------
aphextim
I wonder if there are any other companies/services that are in the same boat
and have to do this as well.

~~~
testplzignore
A better question might be: how many companies actually know about this
executive order? It took effect August 5, but Adobe is just now taking action
on it. I'm pretty sure the company I work for has both free and paid
Venezuelan customers and we (afaik) haven't cut off business with them.

------
madisfun
What it shows is that it's risky to rely on a "cloud"/subscription service
offered by a company from a different jurisdiction. In particular, if the
service provider is a US company, it's a red flag. If it's Chinese, it's a red
flag too.

------
dreamcompiler
Adobe lost me as a customer when they started renting software. I won't run
any software on my machine that has a remote kill switch. This is yet another
example of why Adobe's business model is bad for consumers and great for
Adobe's competitors.

------
cmiles74
Couldn't Adobe take this to court? I thought executive orders were subject to
the same judicial process as legislation. It's seems to me the smart move
would be to exhaust legal avenues before shafting legitimate customers.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Couldn't Adobe take this to court?

Sure, they can take anything to court. The question is can they expect to win,
such that their failure to comply would not have massive adverse consequences.

Executive orders imposing sanctions under the same provision of law this order
relies on are not uncommon and have been litigated. What novel challenge does
Adobe have that makes it worthwhile to fight this one?

> It's seems to me the smart move would be to exhaust legal avenues before
> shafting legitimate customers.

Not taking immediate action to comply, whether or not they are also
challenging the order at the same time, risks criminal prosecution of both the
company and the individuals involved.

And when the government seizes their license servers as part of that criminal
prosecution, a whole lot more “legitimate customers” are screwed.

------
newguy1234
This will just teach all Venezuelans that want to use adobe software how to
pirate it.

------
sword_smith
If there is a silver lining in this, it is that it is probably good for open
source development. But since I am not a graphics guy, I don't know much about
the state of open source image manipulation software.

------
duxup
It seems strange to issue an executive order that would cover ... Photoshop or
something.

I could see a given country limiting some specific things but something so
broad, I don't know what value that is.

------
hootbootscoot
Some zombie bloatware vendors back from the iphone dead kick some poor people
who live in a wrongful place to teach them a lesson. Yay. way to go. we are
all so much better off for sure.

------
oblib
I wonder if GIMP's servers are seeing an uptick in traffic?

------
arbuge
"We are unable to issue refunds. Executive order 13884, orders the cessation
of all activity with the entities including no sales, service, support,
refunds, credits, etc."

Harsh.

------
dzonga
as a member of 3rd rebellious country with an actual questionable human rights
/ economic policy i.e Zimbabwe. These things frighten me. Also I wonder why
other economically powerful zones such as Europe / Asia don't produce quality
software to compete with Americans. seems software talent is everywhere. &
will likely be affected by the US's quasi political pettiness. hey i'm working
as software engineer here in the US .

------
tyingq
I wonder if Adobe is prepared for other nations on less than friendly terms
with the US to start some probing around the Adobe perimeter.

~~~
khuey
What makes you think they're not already doing that? It's not like Adobe is
flying under anyone's radar.

~~~
tyingq
Because there's now a compelling, specific reason to. I imagine the DPRK
started new activity with Sony after hearing about "The Interview".

------
_Microft
Deadline is 28th of october. Did they decide to not refund affected users
before the deadline or are they just not allowed to?

------
aussieguy1234
Now opponents of the regime in Venezuela won't be able to use Adobe tools to
create anti government material.

Nice move, United States.

------
cutler
Talk about kicking a dog when it's down - wtf has this to do with helping the
Venezuelan people? Unemployment and inflation is sky high so let's make it
even worse for everyone by wiping out as many of the companies still surviving
as we can. Great policies Donald. Every day you somehow manage to surpass your
prior level of cluelessness.

------
fnord77
I noticed adobe was spamming reddit with ads today on reddit.

never saw a single ad from them before there

------
fortran77
Adobe is complying with an Executive Order. Why are you all picking on Adobe?

------
lousken
so they're forcing people to pirate their software? interesting

~~~
aflag
It seems it's not their decision, but US government's decision here.

------
Animats
Is Google going to deactivate all Venezuelan accounts? Facebook?

------
cutler
Let this be a lesson in the political implications of relying on cloud/SaaS.
Centralised, remote services also represent a centralised, remote single point
of control. That has implications not only for data security but also for
denial of service on political grounds as Trump has now demonstrated.

------
bhouston
I guess Autodesk and then PTC Creo and then maybe Solidworks.

------
dusted
Oh shi.. Does that mean that if the little yellow man decides, Valve could
disable off all EU steam accounts? That's pretty insane, coming from "the land
of the free" :s

------
alexnewman
AS if venezuela can't figure out a vpn. sigh

------
ComodoHacker
What about Google and other cloud services&

------
HocusLocus
Think of it as Evolution In Action

------
gtirloni
It's interesting that we spend our outrage at companies that are following the
directives of our governments.

I didn't see any outrage when these sanctions were put in place. Certainly not
on HN.

If you think about it, we're outsourcing the job of fighting for our rights to
these companies. And they mostly only care about profits in our capitalist
system.

Should we be putting all these pressures on such biased proxies? Is this the
new norm?

------
edmanet
All due to unmatched wisdom.

------
perakojotgenije
/r/StallmanWasRight

------
butterfi
Time to buy Affinity Stock.

------
_eht
_buys stock in gimp_

------
bartread
On one level I'm absolutely outraged by this, but the thing is it's not
Adobe's fault and, to be honest, there's probably not a lot else they _can_ do
under the circumstances. The fault lies with the Trump administration and
unless and until they change their position nothing will change.

------
sword_smith
Rightwing conservative capitalist here. This imperialistic US foreign policy
is so destructive and so unfair. Sanctions and trade embargoes are an act of
war, yet if Iran or Venezuela responds, the US declares it an attack and feels
justified to impose even harder sanctions or perhaps to invade.

------
meiraleal
So Apple hides a Taiwan flag and HN thinks the Software Engineer should have
done something, they should rebel and fight against oppression of the Chinese
government.

Imagine my surprise here seeing so many people supporting Adobe.

~~~
dmix
HN isn’t a single person. There’s always a variety of opinions. It’s too easy
to find contradictions between two different threads for this to be a helpful
critique.

Nor does everyone here feel the need to take strong political stands on a
hacker forum. So it’s a tough thing to gauge.

------
djohnston
wow no refunds either? good deal for adobe :(

------
pointerpointer
I've quit Adobe when they moved to the cloud, what a horrible scheme. Now I'm
using Inkscape already for years for all my digital graphics work. It's not on
par with Illustrator, but still an amazing open source project we should
cherish.

------
Kenji
Richard Stallman was right.

~~~
yellowapple
Specifically (for the benefit of those who've flagged the above comment to
death), Stallman and the FSF have opposed the proliferation of DRM and SaaS
for this exact reason: because a company can - for any reason - pull the plug
on the software for which you've paid.

There are free-as-in-free-speech alternatives to most (if not all) of Adobe's
software products. If they're "not good enough", then it's in our best
interests to fix that, whether by contributing code to the existing
replacements or creating new ones (perhaps forked from the existing ones). In
the meantime, even if they're "not good enough", at least they can be used,
unlike Adobe's "good enough" tools, so perhaps setting aside those issues in
favor of tools that get you most of the way there without the potential to
suddenly disappear from you with zero recourse would be prudent?

------
amyjess
> Take about crippling certain business in Venezuela. All this is going to do
> is encourage piracy (and potentially malware).

Adobe doesn't really have a choice here. They're doing this to comply with
sanctions, not because they have any dog in fighting Maduro.

If Venezuelans pirate Photoshop, then Adobe can go and say "hey, these people
are using it without our permission, which means we're still in compliance".

~~~
ctdonath
Adobe _had_ a choice, and opted for the one where a single point of failure
could cripple an entire nation of users.

"Failure" in this case is legal, not technical (distinction without a
difference to users).

~~~
gist
> Adobe had a choice

Oh, how so? You think that it pays for them to fight and defy a government
order?

~~~
cmroanirgo
This executive order seems to be a passive aggressive way of declaring war
against a country that has done nothing against the US directly. That said, I
understand that adobe is a US company.

As an Aussie, I look at these international companies as that: international.
Should I now start considering all forms of non Aussie software /tech a matter
of potential infiltration?

I hope Adobe understand they are now complicit in an international fracas,
where there's a lot of innocent people in Venezuela likely feeling an
immediate financial crush, simply because the software they were using
stopped. They can't work now. No money means they can't feed their kids.

They will blame Adobe for this, and not some executive order.

What about the day when some US order outlaws my country? This is a very sad
day for international tech.

~~~
adventured
> What about the day when some US order outlaws my country?

List of the countries under consequential US sanctions attention and their
systems of government:

Russia: dictatorship. Cuba: dictatorship. Iran: theocratic dictatorship.
Venezuela: dictatorship. North Korea: dictatorship. Syria: dictatorship.
Sudan: recently a military junta.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_sanctions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_sanctions)

I too hope Australia is never like those countries. The countries that the US
targets sanctions on, no coincidence, are always near the bottom of the
Democracy Index (and typically very high on corruption rankings).

Short list of liberal democracies that have zero fear of falling under
comparable US sanctions today:

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Ireland, Norway, Finland, Sweden,
Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Spain,
Portugal, Italy, Greece, Iceland, Israel, Slovakia, Czechia, Slovenia,
Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Chile,
Uruguay and so on.

The reason why so many powerful, influential, affluent, liberal nations
cooperate with the US so frequently on sanctions - and have for much of the
post WW2 era - is because they know they are under zero threat from the US
sanctioning them and they also know the US has exclusively targeted sanctions
at non-democratic, extremely high-corruption nations.

It's really simple in fact, here's the Democracy Index. On average the higher
countries rank, the less they ever need to be concerned about US sanctions
being directed at them.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index)

Some of the countries near the bottom of that democracy list: Iran, Syria,
Sudan, North Korea, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I wonder whether "dictatorship" is actual reason. I see your list:

> _Russia: dictatorship. Cuba: dictatorship. Iran: theocratic dictatorship.
> Venezuela: dictatorship. North Korea: dictatorship. Syria: dictatorship.
> Sudan: recently a military junta._

I read it as: Russia: enemy ex-superpower, second biggest net oil exporter.
Cuba: stole our oil refineries half a century ago, we're still mad about it.
Iran: in top 10 of net oil exporters (also, tried to take them over and fucked
up). Venezuela: top ten of net oil exporters. North Korea: old enemy, though
also universally considered evil. Syria: US wants to force a government change
and supports the rebels; there could be an indirect oil-related angle in here.

It may be that I've just been reading too much about energy economics recently
and am getting all consipracy-theorist. Even if so, I absolutely don't buy
that there's any higher good for any of those sanctions.

~~~
droithomme
The Syria issue is about a gas pipeline they want to run across their
territory.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Good to know. It's actually related, as gas is both another important energy
source and plays a part in the more advanced oil production techniques.

------
muyuu
This is truly unconscionable.

------
alienallys
Nice reminder to us non-Americans, that we essentially live in digital
colonial era, where our livelihoods can be effed up at one strike of
signature.

