This past week Adobe launched beta of Photoshop Express, a little over 1 year since Adobe announced its intention to put Photoshop online (see Photoshop In A Software As A Service (SaaS) Model?). Unfortunately for Adobe what proved to be most noteworthy about this new application is not its functionality, but the rights grab they’re making for each image that is processed in the online application.

Adobe makes available a very short and general Terms of Use document for Adobe Photoshop Express users to review. What new Express users see initially during the registration process is only the higher level Adobe.com Terms of Use. Surprisingly Adobe buries their Photoshop Express Terms of Use in a link from their general Terms of Use document concealing the following information:

8. Use of Your Content
a. Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

For myself a few questions came to mind immediately after reading this.
1. “What the hell is Adobe thinking?”
2. “Are corporate lawyers really this out to lunch?”
3. “Why wasn’t greater thought put into supporting the rights of their users and managing the trust behind the Adobe brand?”
4. “Why would Adobe bury the meat of the Terms of Use as they’ve done?”

For the sake of full disclosure I have worked with creative agencies that have done work for Adobe in the past. It’s been a over 18 months since I last worked on anything Adobe related, but one thing is well known about Adobe… they take their brand very serious. By “brand” I mean the corporate perspective of what Adobe stands for and the reputation that they project. From a “brand” perspective this rights grab dramatically undermines the foundation in which their brand had been built upon namely “trust” and “empowering the creative professional”.

I’d like to think that Adobe’s lawyers made a mistake, but knowing how corporate lawyers work every clause of a contract is meticulously reviewed and approved. Nothing a corporate legal team does is an accident. Someone defined, reviewed and approved the terms with a lot of thought. What is certain is that effort was not brought in line with those that manage Adobe’s brand and products. With out a doubt Adobe’s staff was likely under the gun to produce and to give credit where credit is due… to turn out a product like this in a little over a year is an impressive feat. I have the greatest respect for Adobe to accomplish this, but with out hesitation I can say that Adobe really dropped the ball with their Terms of Use. In this day and age as an amateur or professional creative it is nearly impossible to not use Adobe software on a project. To this point an implicit bond and trust has been in place between Creatives and Adobe. If you can’t trust Adobe then who can you trust?

To quote Adobe from their Acquisition of Macromedia FAQ:

“What is Adobe’s mission?
Our mission is to revolutionize how the world engages with ideas and information. By acquiring Macromedia, we are strengthening this mission by making it easier for customers to create, manage, and deliver their ideas and engage with information of all types — in print, on the web, in video, and across mobile devices. We believe in enabling powerful, effective, and meaningful digital experiences across multiple operating systems in the broad span of diverse industries we serve.”

Adobe consistently walks a fine line on many issues facing their customers and partners, but in this instance they have egregiously treaded on their customers rights. To give Adobe credit they’ve recognized their mistake and are trying to make right as noted in John Nack’s blog post A note about PS Express terms of use. None the less once treaded on users undoubtedly will be and should be sensitive to this point and should rightfully keep a close eye even on Adobe.

I hope that Adobe is able to avoid making this mistake twice and given their leading role in this industry perhaps to re-establish their trust and leadership they could take it upon themselves to spearhead defining thoughtful standards and Terms of Use that are respectful of the rights of Creatives; standards and terms that other companies might then adopt as the norm rather than the exception.

Now to watch how quickly Adobe moves to revise and correct their Terms of Use. How fast they move surely will be a sign of how serious they’re taking the issue.

Kudos to fellow JMG-Galleries blog reader Ben Bailey for raising my awareness to this development.

[tags]Adobe, Photoshop Express, rights, copyright, software, technology, web, terms of use, rights grab[/tags]