Andy Budd writes about how he bought and tried to install Adobe Photoshop CS2 without success because of the online verification service that is needed for the software to work. Of course the verification denied his totally valid serial number and activation codes so he couldn’t get Photoshop to work. After the same happened with the automated telephone verification service, he had to contact customer service, who couldn’t get the verification working either. As if that weren’t enough, Budd was told that it was his new MacBook Pro to blame (which was completely false and a totally unprofessional thing to say anyway). Later, when he complained about Adobe’s after-sales service, he was hung up on.

Now it’s blatant enough for anyone in customer service to hang up a phone, but the whole purpose and effect of the verification should be very much put in question. Judging by the article comments, it becomes very clear that a lot of people are having the same problem. So people are finding hacked volume licensed from the ‘net to be able to use their legitimate software copies — volume licences are not subject to the verification system.

So, to put it short, the effects of the verification are:

• Pirates are not affected, because they either use hacked versions of volume licences.
• Adobe needs a lot of extra workforce to take care of the added consumer support and buggy verification software.
• Legitimate customers are labeled as pirates and criminals, and their valuable time is spent on fighting with the installation and verification processes. It doesn’t take an MBA to understand this leads to unhappy customers and less sales.

Wonder how much different this would be had Adobe not a monopoly in many of their most important market segments (they bought Macromedia in 2005).

The funny thing is that there is an option. A commenter mentions that Kai Krauss (the creator of Kai’s Power Tools and Bryce) openly advocated pirating their software, and then paying for it if the user found it valuable. A similar principle is used by many publishers (e.g. Pragmatic Programmers and Apress) with their ebooks. There is no DRM whatsoever in their pdf’s, all they do is they say that they trust the buyer and ask her not to share the book in P2P. Will someone misuse their trust? Certainly. But which is better, a few more pirates and loyal users than disgruntled customers and (theoretically) a couple less pirates?

I myself might have learned using Photoshop during my days at the university with a pirated version. When I started my business, I shelled out more than €1000 for their Creative Suite because I knew how to use it. I’ll let the reader decide whether I did them harm or good.