RE: the "De activating / un registering cs2…" thread

Continued from above…

My situation:
I do work for my brother’s real estate business. He lives almost 300 miles away from me. I use Illustrator quite a bit in these jobs, and am generally very happy with my version 8. I can do everything I really need to do for him.

My brother has bought and installed the one of the CS3 suites, which includes Illustrator CS3, of course. He mostly uses Photoshop, InDesign and Acrobat. He very rarely uses Illustrator, because he doesn’t really have the time to learn it, but he has it so he can do a few things—maybe once or twice a year—open files I send him, poke around a bit, etc. Most often, when I send him my AI8 files he just places them in InDesign, and goes from there.

There are features in Illustrator CS3 that would occasionally be very helpful to me in the work that I do for him. But not really so often that I can justify buying it. Let’s ignore for a minute that I could write it off as a business expense, because I’m a basket case when it comes to organizing stuff like that. 🙂

About 6 months ago, I called Adobe Customer Support, and told them with 100% honesty the working situation I have with my brother’s business as I’ve just described. Then I asked them this:

My brother’s business owns 5 desktop macs and 3 laptop macs. Since my brother very rarely uses AI CS3, and only has it installed on his one desktop system, and since I am the primary Illustrator user for his company, is it within the T.O.S. for him to send the install disk to me so that I can install AI CS3 on my system and be considered the LEGAL 2nd installation for his license?

Answer from Adobe Customer Support (after about 5 minutes, while he asked someone, or researched the legality): Yes, you may do that.

I spent another 10 minutes talking with the C.S.R., asking the same question every possible way, confirming that it’s legal, that it isn’t in violation of the T.O.S. and E.U.L.A., and that it wouldn’t put either of us in jeopardy for some mysterious be-authorization sometime in the future, or that it wouldn’t jeopardize his ability to upgrade to newer versions of the Suite.

I really grilled the guy about these things, because I wanted to be completely above board about everything, and he continually reassured me that what I was asking about was COMPLETELY cool by Adobe.

So far as of the time of this post, I haven’t reminded my brother to send me the installation disk in the mail; that should tell you that I really don’t have a pressing need for the newer features in AI CS3. But if I did, all indications are that my installing it on my system as the 2nd activation on his license is legal.

Soooo…Whether there are any details that Mitch left out—or is fudging on—in the other thread, we can’t know, unless he replies to this thread. And if he replies with more details, we can’t truly know whether he’s telling the full truth.

But, I had to post about my experience just to show that we ought to be a little careful, we should know all the facts and we should assume nothing before we brand a visitor here as a pirate and therefor undeserving of help.

Well if ?Mitch is worried that he won’t be able to install CS3 because he did not deactivate CS2 he can rest assured that there will be no problems.

And his friend is the one who needs to call Adobe

Maybe we were all reading different threads. The OP indicated that he was planning on buying a new license tomorrow so it is clear that he recognized that sharing the original license from his friend was inappropriate.

In regard to what Adobe said over the phone to you…

If it is not in writing, it is useless. The rest of us are simply operating based on the published EULA, which prohibits what was occurring in that other thread <http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?128@@.59b63ac0>. Your anecdote in this user to user forum cannot hold up legally for anyone else.

Whether the OP was an intentional pirate or not, there is no denying that he and his friend were violating the license. With today’s activation schemes, it is more difficult to claim ignorance about licensing. It seemed appropriate for us to teach him how to fish the forum for previous discussion than to waste time saying the same things again and again. (nobody reads posts 1 or 3 – – help was indeed offered – – Mitch was not ignored) 🙂

Phos,

I do thank you for taking the time to elaborate on your situation, and value your opinion, of course. And this does make for interesting discussion. But, in the referenced case, my gut sense tells me that the OP was simply trying to freeload on the other person’s software.

Neil