Adobe: a license to spam?

For all of you who expect a news article, or an abstract, here is what this article is about:

• Adobe has turned to spamming in an attempt to advertise their newest product.
• It is something that many monopolists do, and indeed, Adobe is now a monopoly in the commercial segment of the field.
  
• spamming is illegal in many parts of the world, and rightly so. It is also a really bad idea.
• It is an especially bad idea, if there are free alternatives to your really expensive product.
  
• And there are. And I will show you where.
  

And here is the long version.

I always thought, spam should be illegal. I mean the electronic variety (though I wouldn't mind the "IMP" (Inedible Meat-like Product) to go the same way).

In fact, in some countries, like Germany, where I live, it is illegal (since 2004), and every US-Bill that I know of, that the spammers usually quote in a fashion similar to "this spam message is legal according to ..." hasn't actually passed into law. (And, can anybody tell me what happened to this US Bill?)

I always thought, no self-respecting large company manufacturing good software will go out there and spam.

I also always thought, a legit company doesn't need to spam, because all spam does to a company with a reputation is to damage it.

Today, though, I've got an email with the title, "Today, everything will change".

And suddenly, it did.

That particular mail contained clear indications of being spam -- including but not limited to

• web links with the encrypted ID of my email address
• the lack of a personal address or even my first or last name anywhere in the mail,
• the form,
• and the notorious "If you'd prefer not to receive e-mail like this from us in the future, please click here" text so well known from opt-out mailings -- which are illegal in Germany, and which are also known to mark your e-mail address as a better target for spam if you click on them, because now you've proven that it is a valid e-mail address.
  

It also was sent to an e-mail address at a German mail provider that I never use for anything but potential spammer websites.

That email, though, was in English, and it was from "Adobe Systems Inc.".

At first I thought, it was a phishing scam. But no, all the www links point to http://direct.adobe.com/r?bmZmdWJ5cmZAbnFib3IucGJ6
(the code is changed so you don't accidentally register me)

Notice the "direct", for "direct marketing" as in "unsolicited email", adobe.com as in THE Adobe Systems Inc., and r, as in "register"?

I abstain from posting the full text, since that would be just more marketing for Adobe anyway. I should just say, that the email was about their new, horrendously expensive piece of software with the proposition:

Creative license
Take as much as you want.

They say it as "Complete creative freedom to work in any medium". After taking a look at the amount of products in the bundle, and recalling all the acquisitions by Adobe in the last years, it suddenly became clear to me: Adobe isn't just planning to monopolize the entire (commercial) graphics and video industry, it already did.
The "freedom to work in any medium" is just very carefully wrapped new-speak for "now all the software you'll ever need for web design, video or content creation, you'll either have to buy from us in a bundle that costs more then you earn in a month, of which you only will ever want one piece anyway, or write yourself".

After having seen similar "campaigns" from Microsoft and Apple before, I think I can safely paraphrase the above slogan as

Creating monopolies
We spam as much as we want.

Well, there is also good news for the graphics artists out there:

You can get Gimp for free, even on the Mac.

You see, Adobe forgot a teeny-tiny thing. They don't like open source, they don't endorse open source, and they close their eyes in the hopes that if they ignore it long enough it will go away. How 'bout we go away instead. From Adobe. Somewhere more pleasant.

For example, instead of going to the Adobe's "all young artists are belong to us" conference, why not attending Libre Graphics Meeting (http://www.libregraphicsmeeting.org/) instead, and learning of the newest and best in free graphics applications.

Also, Knoppix live DVDs contain many of the free graphics tools in one package. You don't even need to install them. Just download the disk image, burn the DVD (or buy it from a store near you, for example from on-disk for $5.99,* pop it into any computer that can read it, and go. The boot process is lengthy, but it will normally not ask you any technical questions, detect all your hardware automatically, and it doesn't install anything on your hard disk, allowing you to just play with the software at will. If there's nothing you like on the disk, just throw the DVD in the garbage (or erase the rewriteable) and never think about it again. It had cost you $6.

Unlike buying into a medium-size cattle farm called CS3, where you will have to pay for an upgrade every time they build a shinier fence, and also can't give it back once it's open. Which does sound suspiciously like a can of spam. Except, that, too, can be had at a much lower price.

Which reminds me: I know that every wannabe "direct marketing" company out there and many short-sighted small IT corporations that benefited from the original increase in public awareness will try to convince you that I'm wrong. A couple of studies though (for example "The effect of direct advertising to the dearly departed" ) show that spam is indeed not all roses. Most of the IT recognizes spam as a problem. 80% of all the email traffic is spam. And yes, we do pay for it. Even if you don't pay per time or per bulk any more, it is still included in the cost of your "flat rate" and prevents your provider from offering you a better price.

And also... When was the last time you heard somebody say that he was happy to receive a spam mail?

So what is the morale of this little story? Things have changed. Adobe just commited something that in parts of the world constitutes a crime, and waved "all your base..." in our faces. I just lost my last bit of respect for a company that at some point did manufacture quality software, after wasting half a day bitching about it, and added it to my spam filter. And you, my dear reader, might discover a bunch of powerful, new and free tools. Benefit for Adobe so far? Zero.

Case closed.

* - If you order the Knoppix-DVD, watch the version -- the newer, the better / the latter versions of the graphics software you'll usually get. It should be minimum Version 5.1.1 (as of the 4. of April, 2007).
- If you download the disk image, look that it fits to your architecture.(32 or 64 bit, etc).
- If you have trouble with Knoppix, try Ubuntu.
- If you already use Debian, or another linux distribution you can install many of the free tools using your package manager, e.g. aptitude on Debian. Just look through the "graphics" package :)

PS: Useful information about spam (the electronic variety) and how to deal with it, can be found here: www.stopspamhere.ca