[house]

I believe piracy is theft. It doesn't matter if piracy helped Adobe or not, it is wrong and illegal.

Being illegal and or wrong doesn't mean it's theft. Believing something is theft that simply isn't by any legal measure is quite odd. Unfortunately you're not the first I've encountered that insists on private meanings of established words. It doesn't make much sense though.

[Tesla]

Being illegal and or wrong doesn't mean it's theft. Believing something is theft that simply isn't by any legal measure is quite odd. Unfortunately you're not the first I've encountered that insists on private meanings of established words. It doesn't make much sense though.

Unfortunate or not, I think it makes sense to most of us.

[MarkJerling]

Yes. No response yet. But it is hard to think it is anything other than deliberate, as it is a very specific pop-up.

Getting back to your specific problem: Would you like to share a screenshot as it may help us troubleshoot the problem?

I'll just add that I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Adobe and Autodesk. At least the various Adobe software I subscribe to only costs me around $400 per year, while Autodesk costs me over $2,500. But, I need both for my business so it's pretty much a case of "suck it up buttercup".

Anyway, I have found solutions to most of my Autodesk and Adobe problems with google searches and various forums. So, chances are, we (or someone) can fix yours.

[Parallax]

Being illegal and or wrong doesn't mean it's theft. Believing something is theft that simply isn't by any legal measure is quite odd. Unfortunately you're not the first I've encountered that insists on private meanings of established words. It doesn't make much sense though.

Well, the FBI seems to be under the impression that piracy, in this usage, is theft,

Intellectual Property Theft/Piracy

[house]

Well, the FBI seems to be under the impression that piracy, in this usage, is theft,

Intellectual Property Theft/Piracy

That's surprisingly sloppy! But I don't know much about how responsible and accurate US policing tends to be with their communications. Back in the day there were attempts by anti-piracy organisations funded by rights holders to influence discourse and to place that language in the press etc. Apparently the FBI were receptive to manipulation. The language doesn't hold water legally so it's sloppy by an institution designed up uphold the law (?) to be so casual about wording.

Edit: reading it again I see that they are referring to two things. IP theft as in extracting information such as trade secrets and second piracy. Those are two different things, though related.

[Parallax]

The language doesn't hold water legally

I didn't realize that you are an authority on U.S. law and U.S. law enforcement agencies. My apologies.

[mee]

Spend much of your life developing skills to develop software. Then develop software that people want to use in a team with millions of dollars spent on this software's creation. Then see what your thoughts are when you see people using that software outside of the user agreements for the software (that is, that didn't pay for it or are sharing it with friends).


You can be sure piracy is theft. If you're operating commercial software and you didn't pay for the right to operate said software, you are illegally operating the software. In common language, You stole it.

Anything beyond this is just whining and mental gymnastics by people who want to steal and use software in an illegal manner.

[Wheatfield]

If your catalogue is on your hard drive, you are still in Lightroom Classic or, possibly, some combination of Lightroom Classic and the cloud version of Lightroom which can be done with care and some difficulty. My originals are stored on my hard drive in a location I specify in my preferences; but every time I edit a photograph it is taken from the Cloud. I have no .xmp files on my hard drive in my Cloud Photography directory and no catalogue; all edits are in the Cloud. I can export the original with its settings which then gives me the attached .xmp file. I do this when I want to edit the photograph in DxO or Affinity Photo; and then I import the edited version of the photograph back into Lightroom. This means that when I am in a coffee shop editing photos on my Surface tablet or Android device I am processing the original file, not a smart preview.

It turns out I'm using Lightroom Classic as part of a subscription bundle of Lightroom and Photoshop. It's fine for me because I don't edit photos anywhere other than at my desktop computer.

---------- Post added May 12th, 2021 at 08:52 AM ----------

Piracy isn't theft. Its an absurd and inaccurate use of language. As far as I know it doesn't fall under theft anywhere on earth. You might as well call it murder or reckless driving.

I think piracy helped Adobe immensely as I pointed out in a post above. Piracy is how people learn and become addicted to the software. Those people would never pay the full price for private use and would have learned another less expesive alternative. Sames goes for businesses using pirated software. What happened is that everyone learned Adobe products and when they had the business case or got employed a legit copy was purchased. Those that have a business case are the only actual lost sales. It's one of the amazingly obvious things that people stuck in 19th century capitalism can't understand.

Because I'm certain piracy helped Adobe I'm very glad they've managed to reduce it. Already alternatives are becoming stronger. The bad blood caused by the subscription model is another huge cause of people abandoning Adobe. Subscription models are a holy grail of the last couple of years. Not just for software, everything should be a subscription. There are various economic reasons for this but none of those reasons are any good for consumers. It's just lock in and makes it more difficult for consumers to manage their costs.

Edit: A company with the revenue of Adobe should be able to produce much better software. A handful of people working for free in their spare time manage to pull off most of the functionality if not the polish. As with all companies the focus moves from improving the software to engineering the perfect upgrade path and lock in. Much like the market segmentation of Canon cameras for instance. My guess is that the man hours on marketing, financial set ups and most efficient artificial limiting of sofware completely dwarfs the engineering/software hours.

Excuse me, but piracy is theft plain and simple. It's taking something that is not yours, that you have not paid for, and have no rights to. I expect you are falling back on the concept that because software is not physical property, it cannot be stolen, but this has been decided in the courts to be wrong.
Intellectual property is property. Taking it without permission and without paying for it is theft.
In the case of Photoshop, piracy in no way helped Adobe, and in every way hurt Adobe's customers. Consider what Photoshop would have cost on the retail market if the 80-90% of users that had not paid for the software had paid for it. Instead, the legitimate users had to underwrite the thieves.
The rest of your post appears to be an attempt at deflection. I won't address that.

---------- Post added May 12th, 2021 at 08:57 AM ----------

Being illegal and or wrong doesn't mean it's theft. Believing something is theft that simply isn't by any legal measure is quite odd. Unfortunately you're not the first I've encountered that insists on private meanings of established words. It doesn't make much sense though.

Pray tell, what do you call taking something without permission and without paying for it?
When a cargo ship or tanker is boarded and control of said ship is taken away from the crew, who are the representatives of the rightful owners, by pirates off the coast of Somalia, are you saying that is not theft?
I am genuinely curious.

[swanlefitte]

This has taken a turn to semantics. It is interesting that theft for fair use isn't theft. "Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder for purposes such as criticism, parody, news reporting, research and scholarship, and teaching." Using Copyrighted Material | Copyright | Baylor University.

When the same action has opposite meanings those who define the meanings have stolen our ability to communicate. It is like arguing if something is grue or bleen. The answer is yes, no, maybe, it depends in a superposistion.

In grue and bleen.
Grue and bleen | Apologetics Wiki | Fandom

[Wheatfield]

This has taken a turn to semantics. It is interesting that theft for fair use isn't theft. "Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder for purposes such as criticism, parody, news reporting, research and scholarship, and teaching." Using Copyrighted Material | Copyright | Baylor University.

When the same action has opposite meanings those who define the meanings have stolen our ability to communicate. It is like arguing if something is grue or bleen. The answer is yes, no, maybe, it depends in a superposistion.

In grue and bleen.
Grue and bleen | Apologetics Wiki | Fandom

Downloading an expensive piece of software along with a key generator from a file sharing site, using that to install the software without paying for it and then using it in perpetuity can in no way be considered fair use.

[texandrews]

We're drifting way off topic. If anyone has something to contribute about the OP's problem, please chime in. Otherwise, might need to shut the thread down.

So far, I'm not certain we've got a solution. Would be good to hear again from the OP....

[Wheatfield]

We're drifting way off topic. If anyone has something to contribute about the OP's problem, please chime in. Otherwise, might need to shut the thread down.

So far, I'm not certain we've got a solution. Would be good to hear again from the OP....

To be fair, there are no questions asked in the original post regarding a solution to anything.

However, I think his best hope is to reactivate his software, or take out a subscription on new software for the amount of time it takes him to sort out his difficulty.
I imagine it will be easier for him to port his pictures to a new software system if he has full access to them.

[madbrain]

Last time I let my Adobe subscription lapse, I could still access all my local photos in Lightroom Classic. I could even print them. Only the editing options were disabled. It was a while ago.

[noelpolar]

Some thoughts here are pretty funny... so from now on..... when someone "steals" one of my cameras.... I will now see it only as a kindly "act of giving"..... in effect.... if I understand the thought process correctly... they gave me the gift (or opportunity) of "upgrading" my camera.... so .... from now on "thief" will be struck from my vocabulary...... and such people will be referred to from this time forward by me as the "benevolent's".... god bless them.

The person that ran off with my first wife was, upon reflection, a "benevolent" of the first order!

[swanlefitte]

when someone "steals" one of my cameras....

First this isn't about right and wrong. I am talking about the peculiar use. Using a film camera to tape a show or using a VHS to film a show are both peculiar.

You use the word steal. Do you mean someone has a copy of your camera? Do you mean you let them use the camera as long as they didn't take pictures of trees and they did so it is now stolen? or do you mean you no longer have your camera? the word steal seems peculiar in 2 of these usages. It is used for more things too. The other ways are extremely difficult to separate from the morality so I am only mentioning how steal and theft have morphed and you can argue the term is misleading like filming on a VHS.