Tired of the ‘War on Piracy’, Adobe Hopes to Turn Pirates into Customers

[shamu726]

Rather than punishing them with enforcement actions, software company Adobe says it now prefers to deal with pirates by converting them into paying customers. “Everyone is tired of the entire concept and term ‘Anti-Piracy’, even the term ‘Content Protection’ too,” Adobe’s Anti-Piracy chief Richard Atkinson says. Adobe believes that the piracy problem is in part created by the industry and that companies themselves hold the key to solving it.

The Anti-Piracy and Content Protection Summit currently taking place in Los Angeles has revealed some interesting attitude changes among content creators.

Yesterday we covered comments from Warner Bros’ Chief of Anti-Piracy Operations David Kaplan, who said that the movie studio is now viewing piracy as a proxy for consumer demand. Based on this belief, the company is adjusting its legal offerings to better compete with unauthorized consumption.

Warner’s comments imply that copyright holders themselves can take significant steps to decrease online piracy by looking at what consumers really want. This position is also being embraced by Adobe, which has resulted in major changes to the computer software company’s anti-piracy policies.

In a teaser for the summit, Richard Atkinson, Adobe’s Corporate Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy, says the company now takes a more positive approach to solving piracy. Instead of hammering on enforcement, Adobe is now focusing on converting pirates into paying customers.

“The strategy and concept of moving from traditional ‘enforcement-led anti piracy’ to a ‘business-focused pirate-to-pay conversion program’ is a BIG change, needing changes to operational elements as well as cultural elements,” Atkinson explains.

According to Atkinson the public has grown weary of the age-old war on piracy and awareness campaigns telling them not to steal.

“Everyone is tired of the entire concept and term ‘Anti-Piracy’, even the term ‘Content Protection’ too. It feels like an ongoing war that has been going on for 20+ years… with the same old good-guy vs bad-guy battles,” Atkinson notes.

Adobe’s Anti-Piracy Chief stresses that piracy is a problem that’s in part created by businesses, and that these same businesses hold the keys to solving it.

There are no breakthrough technologies that can help to reduce piracy according to Atkinson. Similar to Warner Bros., the company believes that they can make most progress by trying to understand why people pirate, and come then up with competing products.

“The core fundamental aspect is not necessarily technology… it is UNDERSTANDING what is really going on. In my years working in this space, I have consistently found that very few people actually have FACTS about what is going on.”

“Once you have the facts, then it will change your beliefs and your actions,” he adds.

One of the results of Adobe’s new strategy is the shift away from boxed products and towards a cloud-based subscription model. The company recently launched their Creative Cloud, which aims to make Photoshop and other products more affordable to the public.

The company believes that by spreading out the costs their products will become accessible to a larger group of consumers, hopefully converting some pirates into paying customers along the way.

“I do not think people who pirate our software do it because they are bad people, or because they like to steal things. I just think that they decided that they can not afford it,” Adobe’s David Wadhwani said earlier this month when the Creative Cloud launched.

It’s refreshing to see how Adobe, Warner Bros. and other companies are changing their attitudes towards piracy. While there’s no doubt that enforcement against commercial infringers will remain high on the agenda, the realization that waging war with potential consumers is not the way to go is a healthy one.

Source: TorrentFreak

[mikie]

Screw Adobe.

That company will threaten to send lawyers knocking on your front door if you don't make an appointment to visit their lawyers office if they even suspect piracy. They don't give a hill of beans about consumers.

[STEEL]

:think:

[LiLmEgZ]

I wish em the best of luck... its going to be very hard :D

[DKT27]

As I've mentioned before, make it (non-subscription based) very cheap for home / non-commercial users. The piracy of Adobe products will go down by 40-50%.

Right now, even legal software users / piracy haters pirate things like Photoshop, because it's too expensive for a common man.

As for cloud, it makes things worse. A person who uses such products only once in a month will not pay a monthly fees for such.

[Bizarre™]

Tired of the ‘War on Piracy’, Adobe Hopes to Turn Pirates into Customers

When pigs fly.

[Beamslider]

Just download and use the CS2 products....They have taken them off the activation server and put them up for download on their site with serial keys. All of them both MAC and Windows. They work fine in Windows 7 and suit most peoples needs.

They don't have them in protected part of web site but I guess you are supposed to wink about having the originals.

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/

[broascadilie]

I wish em the best of luck... :D

''its going to be very hard''.Very hard ? You're funny :) IMPOSSIBLE,i wood say.

[broascadilie]

Even if i wood have the money to pay,i still woldn't.Free and cracked ALWAYS sounds better :))

God i love piracy !

[OrioNeXus]

Adobe products are costly!!! so is piracy involved with it...I have moved onto GIMP does most of the work i need plus u can also use paint net

[insanedown58]

Adobe products are costly!!! so is piracy involved with it...I have moved onto GIMP does most of the work i need plus u can also use paint net

Amen brother! The only reason why I still use Photoshop is because of the extra accuracy I get when smoothing out merged photos.

[OrioNeXus]

Adobe products are costly!!! so is piracy involved with it...I have moved onto GIMP does most of the work i need plus u can also use paint net

Amen brother! The only reason why I still use Photoshop is because of the extra accuracy I get when smoothing out merged photos.

Yes I agree But normal users should start with simple free softwares as i mentioned they have a thinking that "photoshop" is everything they heard they can crop/resize..whatever simple tasks only in photoshop/paid softwares when such things can also be done with ms-paint/ignoring inbuilt functions

[STEEL]

This is a very interesting Topic & I don,t think it will end here, but only the start of bigger things to come.

Just my opinion :rolleyes: