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Adobe Sues MacNN Over Photoshop Article
petard writes: "Law.com ran this article on how Adobe is suing MacNN over an article which appeared on AppleInsider with detailed information on and screenshots of Photoshop 6, currently in (non-public) beta. Could this be bad news for other rumor sites, and possibly even sites like Slashdot? Hope MacNN wins ..."
Wow.
l egal-nonsense" guaranteed right ), is only biting the hand that feeds you. Cover your the new version release of your primary revenue stream software? I'll have to consult our legal department first....
There must be a medical boneheaded-knee-jerk response test that is a mandatory job requirement in some of the corporate legal departments.
Instead of viewing it correctly as free publicity, it's automatically classified as a threat.
Beta-screen leaks to be accepted. It's all calculated into the marketing scheme to grab attention and future {mind, market} share. Suing the companies that publish (as in, freedom of the press, a "Constitutionally-but-still-subject-to-corporate-
Maybe what they should do is what the automotive industry does: disguise the object in question. That's right. Photographs of prototype cars, pre-production models, proof-of-concept cars, etc. are a mainstay of the automotive magazine. The manufacturer's counter to the various "spy" photographs: disguise the vehicles in question.
I can just see the user interface now:
Beta Tester: "Where's the zoom button?"
Quality Assurance Tester: "It's that black button right there."
BT: "You mean this black button?"
QAT "No, no, the other black button."
BT: "Oh, you mean this black button."
QAT (frustrated tone): "No, that black button."
BT: "Screw this, the entire user interface is black buttons. Even the workspace is blacked out. Why don't I just turn off the monitor and move my mouse around and make 'ooh, ahh, pretty' sounds?"
QAT: (under their breath) "I hate this fucking job...."
Monish Bhatia, the publisher of Washington, D.C.-based Macintosh News Network, said no one sent the publication information about Adobe's Photoshop 6.0 and ImageReady 3.0. "That particular document was accessible in the public domain," Bhatia said.
If they got their information from public domain documents, what exactly is Adobe suing about??
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
I absolutely agree with your assessment of the law (the Beta Tester surely broke the license) but with one proviso:
As much as we may hate the Big Boys, I think it's *very* germaine to find out if AppleInsider knew or suspected that the license was being broken. If not, they are co-conspirators, just like you don't have to pull the trigger to be a part of a murder conspiracy. AppleInsider is hardly a naive innocent - this is their stock in trade.
Imagine someone slipped your sister a 'date-rape' drug and took various photos without her consent. If they submit those pictures to a porn site, would you argue:
a) The website didn't know. They are innocent, and can continue to host these photos.
b) The website didn't know. They are innocent, but should take the photos down.
c) Holy Haddock! Maybe they didn't they didn't know, but any reasonable person would have asked! I mean there's a naked, unconscious (possibly underage) girl in those pictures. Not asking if it was 'posed' with proper concent obtained is tantamount to "Wanton Disregard" for the law and the rights of others or "Willful Neglect" at the very least. At worst, it's a tissue-thin pretense.
d) Da Bi-yatch Axt 4 it. And biznesus suk. Fsck 'em all.
e) Regrettably, there exists no contract between the site and your sister, and the material is 'out in the public now', so the cat's out of the bag. You can prosecute the scumbag with the drug -- if you can find him, but the porn site's actions were perfectly okay, and since there are 1st Amendment (free speech and freedom of the press) issues here, the porn site doesn't even have to help locate the scumbag: he's a "protected source"
Recall, the issue here is the *pictures*, not anything else the scumbag might have done.
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
The Gimp itself doesn't support editing in CMYK. It does, however, support printing in CMYK, and 6 and 7 color printers (CcMmYyK). The development version of the print plugin (which I am project lead for) supports the latest Epson Stylus printers, including the Photo 870 and 1270, and produces print quality comparable to Windows (many people think that in certain ways the print quality is better, although the smoothness still has a ways to go).
See http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net for more information on this.
Follow this link.
1. If you are a graphic artist, sooner or later some client will send you a disk from another graphic artist with a file done in Illustrator 9 and you may be required to buy or warez version 9 in order to complete his job.
2. I recommend anyone who is considering buying or upgrading Illustrator to reconsider and buy Canvas instead...
3. And Corel's Photopaint... is good enough to COMPLETELY REPLACE PHOTOSHOP for much less money.
You say that if I use Illustrator 8 I will one day need to upgrade to version 9 to accomodate a customer? That is very valid and very true. The part I don't understand is that using Canvas/PhotoPaint will allow me to not have to upgrade to the newer Adobe versions. If there is some new proprietary feature in Illustrator/Photoshop that I need to use and can't be circumvented by saving as an .eps/.tiff/.somethingelse then you can be damn sure some other companies product isn't going to support it either.
I would still have have to get raped by Adobe for their upgrade and I will have wasted time, money and training on another product as well!
In the graphic arts industry it is extremely difficult to deviate from the "industry standards" because your service bureau probably doesn't have it/doesn't support it/doesn't have anyone who knows how to use it/doesn't know what it is.
MacSlash: News for Mac Geeks
I read a version of the article on MacWeek.com. It was a fairly neutral article, but the user comments were mostly negative. Photoshop 6 doesn't seem to have too many new features - but at least they're pushing the layer limit past 99. I hate having to merge layers to keep under that threshold in the latter stages of a project.
One feature they desperately need is layer groups/folders. You can link layers, etc, but being able to shift groups of them around in the layers palette (not changing the x/y positioning within the document itself though, just the z) would be very handy.
And also, they need to switch the usage of the M key back to Photoshop 4 style, where it switched between rectangular and circular marquee select modes. In Photoshop 5 it just selects the previously used one, and repeatedly hitting it does SFA (unless it's just my version).
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Then it's quite possible that they'll pay the price.
Whether you agree with it or not, the law is the law.
BlackNova Traders
What are you talking about? They claimed it was a trade secret. In general, that means that the stuff in question is not protected by other things. Anyway, screenshots are probably not copyright violations in a review; that's fair use.
Copyright violation "used for commercial gain" may or may not get into the criminal realm, or the huge damages; it's totally dependant on other context. I doubt a court would award anything of the sort.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I've tried running Adobe PhotoShop under Win95/P133. It hurts. But then, no one does that, so speed really isn't the issue. The big thing is feature set and usability. If you're in the ready-for-print world, you get that from Adobe. If you're in the Web world, you get it from Gimp.
They've already removed the links to the articles. Mirrors, anyone?
Jason
...go after it's QA folks and UI designers who exist in a culture that loves to trade software and insider secrets. -- ib
--- Speaking only for myself,
I disagree. There are several significant elements of the Adobe case that differ from the Ford v. Blue Oval case.
First, Ford's suit involved revelations about a product that was already sold, and had already been widely reviewed elsewhere. The Article quoted, for example, observations by Car and Driver. The documents were used to confirm and elaborate on existing, legal comments. The Apple Insider article was entirely information that could not have been obtained from any legal source.
Second, there were very germaine issues of public interests in this case, including safety issues, reliability issues, and misrepresentation of the product being sold (e.g. Ford dynamometer tests showed the engine did not develop the horsepower advertised). There is no compelling public interest in the Apple Insider case.
Thirdly, the Ford suit was directed at preventing publication, not monetary damages, etc. they may well have won a suit on different grounds (and could still bring such a suit). However, there were 'common sense' issues involved in trying to recover damages for revealing your own corporate malfeasance. Adobe would have no problem suing for damages (however difficult to assess) rather than merely 'cease and desist'.
Fourthly, despite their self-proclaimed 'victory', Blue Oval lost most of the issues in the case, which was only a preliminary injuction. The finding was titled Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Plaintiff' Motion for Preliminary Iinjunction. There were three major points, and two sub points. They won on the first count, a 'prior restraint' clause, and partly because it was a preliminary injunction and (one suspects) partly because Ford committed some egregious offenses, such as e-mailing the ISP before the petition for the TRO (Technical Restraining Order) was heard, and claiming that the site was in violation of a court order, thereby unlawfully shutting down the site for several days.
Bottom Line: Blue oval can't use the documents, and copyright/trademark infringement suits may still be brought without prejudice The defendant was even ordered to preserve evidence for such a future suit (See Court findings below.) It hasn't been that long (in court terms) since this verdict, and i haven't checked - a case may have been filed already.
Make no mistake, I think Ford was wrong, wrong, wrong, to hide this info. but this case may not be the best example to bring to the defense of Apple Insider!
1) Ford's request for preliminary injunction of Lane's using, copying, or disclosing Ford's internal documents is DENIED, and Ford's request for a preliminary injunction against Lane's use of Ford's trademarks and logo is DENIED WITHOUT PREJUDICE as moot.
2) The other aspects of Ford's request for a preliminary injunction are GRANTED since Lane stipulated to the entry of a preliminary injunction as follows:
A. Lane is restrained from destroying, despoiling or electronically deleting or erasing documents in his possession originated by or for Ford Motor Company.
B. Lane is restrained from (1) committing any acts of infringement of Ford's copyrights, including unpublished works known by Lane to have been prepared by a Ford employee within the scope of his or her employment, or specially ordered or commissioned by Ford, if not an employee; and (2) interfering with Ford's contractual relationship with its employees by soliciting Ford employees to provide Ford trade secrets or other confidential information.
3) Lane is still obligated to comply with that part of the August 25, 1999 Temporary Restraining Order which required him to file with the Court, and serve upon Ford, within ten days, a sworn statement (1) identifying with particularity all documents within his possession, custody or control which were originated by or for Ford, (2) identifying the source (by name or description) of each document, and (3) providing details as to how Lane acquired each document.
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
We could save ourselves some time by asking the people who are actually lawyers to put IAAL in their posts. That way, everyone else - the majority of posters - could quit putting IANAL in their posts.
As a side benefit, you could search the page for 'IAAL' and easily identify lawyers in order to flame them.
If they violated it, it is actionable.
The idea behind non-public betas are to allow a company to test the product (w/o getting slammed). It also allows them to get feedback on features, that might or might not be included in the final product. Though as of the last couple of years, the original ideas behind beta have been diluted.
Fight Spammers!
You do NOT talk about Beta Club!
The second rule of Beta Club is...
You do NOT talk about Photoshop!
The third and final rule of Beta Club is... If this is your sixth major release of a product, your lawyers must shut the fuck up, because it's not going to be anything really new or amazing, and noone but inbred Mackintosh rejects are going to cream their pants over it.
DontBlow.com is an absolute good.
"Trade secrets do not lose protection if they are stolen or otherwise illegally obtained."
Once a trade secret is leaked, it's no longer a trade secret. If someone steals a trade secret, and it's later reclaimed, it's still a trade secret. But the moment they tell the secret to someone who didn't play a part in the theft, the info is no longer a trade secret, and the thief is liable for the damages. tbo's comment is correct if you replace "if they" with "when they".
In this scenario, the trade secret was leaked when Joe Beta Tester gave the details to MacNN, not later when MacNN posted them to the world.
And of course, once a trade secret is leaked, it's no longer a trade secret, not having the protections of copyright or patent law.
The recource of the injured party is to sue the person who leaked the trade secret, the beta tester. Even if MacNN was certain that it was a trade secret, it was no longer a trade secret when it was in their hands.
True, IANAL, but this info is straight from Pamela Samuelson's course on intellectual property law at UC Berkeley.
Of course, the situation is entirely different if Adobe can prove that MacNN stole the secrets themselves, i.e. that they swiped a copy from a beta tester without their consent.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Excuse me? People (including Adobe's competitors) have the right to know the details of commercial software that hasn't been publicly released yet? What gives you that idea? They developed it; it's their product. Surely they have the right to keep it to themselves if they want? If they do in fact have some innovative new feature, they don't want their competitors implementing it before they're ready to ship!
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
What is gamut? Is that related to gamma?
Color gamut refers to the range of possible colors available in a given colorspace. There are colors that you can produce using red-green-blue phosphors that cannot be reproduced via cyan-magenta-yellow-black inks on paper (and vice-versa). Photoshop gives you the option of working in various color spaces (RGB, CMYK, HSV, etc.) depending on your eventual output destination. It can optionally warn you, when working in RGB, for example, whether you're using colors that can't be reproduced on paper.
The gov't isn't stepping in. There's no police action. No coercive steps are being taken. Adobe's saying "Don't publish ill-gotten material."
Save the geek-with-black-tape icon for stories that deserve it.
Here are the Links:
..........sig...........
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
And A mirror in the event they are removed Right here
There is also something which I've heard called the "Osborne Effect" (after the ill-fated lugable PC maker of the late 70s), which says that the more customers here about the next great thing, the less likely people will buy your existing products.
Of course, this never hurt Microsoft, who was telling anyone who would listen about Windows 2000 way back in 1997.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
*Ahem*
From the article:
Adobe says both the existence of the new versions of its products -- Adobe Photoshop 6.0 and Adobe ImageReady 3.0 -- and their features are trade secrets.
Emphasis mine.
--Shoeboy
(former microserf)
Big deal, to claim millions in damages makes this sound like a frivolous lawsuit and makes adobe look like a bunch of babies.
The first posters comments very true, if anything else, this became an announcment for their new product that money couldn't buy. Now everyone knows.
Finkployd
If you have access to Freenet, check out these nodes:
/macnn/photoshop/vif-fullscreen-small.jpg
/macnn/photoshop/vif-dropshaddow-small.gif
/macnn/photoshop/alegal-venus-in-furs.html
/macnn/photoshop/alegal-venus-in-furs-part4.html
/macnn/photoshop/vif-web-photo-small.gif
/macnn/photoshop/vif-spalsh-small.gif
/macnn/photoshop/alegal-venus-in-furs-part3.html
/macnn/photoshop/vif-adobe-online-small.jpg
/macnn/photoshop/vif-print-options-small.gif
/macnn/photoshop/alegal-venus-in-furs-part2.html
/macnn/photoshop/vif-save-small.gif
/macnn/photoshop/vif-preset-man-small.gif
/macnn/photoshop/vif-liquify-small.gif
/macnn/photoshop/alegal-pet-wolverine.html
/macnn/photoshop/pw-fullscreen-small.jpg
/macnn/photoshop/pw-animation-small.gif
/macnn/photoshop/pw-splash-small.gif
The GIMP does run under Win32... there are two ports, one native and one that requires an X server. I'm not sure about the status of the X server one, but the native port can be found at http://www.gimp.org/win32. I'm fairly sure there was a Mac. port in progress.. or perhaps when OS X is available it will be easy to port to that? I can't remember as I'm not a Mac person.
-- Ace
If hype about Photoshop 6 starts to ramp up six months before the intended start of their PR campaign, they'll have to deal not only with the "Well, I'll just wait for the new version now!" mentality but the "Gosh, it's taking them an awfully long time...I wonder what's wrong!" mentality, as well.
...what if one of the features released turns out to be poorly received by the community? Even if they scrap the entire feature, they'll still have to deal with the "Well, thank god they at least got rid of that stupid thing!" chatter that goes about. Certainly, it is a far better scenario for Adobe to never have to deal with such criticisms in the first place. That is what could end up costing them money--having to fight negative PR for a product that hasn't even come out of development yet.
.005% of the buying public that bases it's purchasing decisions on features mentioned in beta reviews on appleinsider (but not actually in the final product) could take billions.
Yeah, we know how all the pre-launch hype for win95 totally damaged sales and kept it from gaining market share...
Yeah, fighting the damage caused by the
look at what happened to Romero with Daikatana. The game really is a passable game, in spite of it's faults, but because it has been so closely watched for four years now, it's been branded as the laughingstock of the industry for being far too little, far too late.
Passable? First (timeframe, era, epoch, whatever) was so sucky that I just quit. I'd have to say that daikatana is a laughingstock because it stinks. I'm now using the cd as a coaster. (It was a burned copy, I didn't pay for the damned thing.)
Game crashed more than a little as well, and the low quality of ATI drivers for win2k doesn't explain all of that.
Basically, only companies that *KNOW* that their product sucks will take an action like adobe is taking.
--Shoeboy
(former microserf)
No. If you just use GPL software without reading the license, then fine. It falls under the same resrictions as any copyrighted work. It would be pretty much the same as using closed source software in the eyes of the law - eg. can't copy it, or distribute it without the copyright holders' consent.
However, if you do read and agree to the GPL, you are granted ADDITIONAL rights to copy, modify, distribute etc. so long as you in turn make the resulting code free too.
So, if you break the GPL (eg. re-distributing closed source) without agreeing to the GPL, then you are committing standard copyright infringement. If you break the GPL, after agreeing to the GPL, then you are in breach of contract.
Credit goes to RMS - it's really a clever system.
http colon slash slash ps six mirror dot hypermart dot net
--
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that a gamut is simply a range, or region (since they're usually represented in more than 1 dimension) of colors. In this specific case, various devices are capable of representing different gamuts. There are some colors which are representable in CMYK which simply cannot be described in RGB (negative values for R, G or B channels, for instance), and vice-versa. Thus, if you make an image in RGB mode, and wish to print it on a CMYK device, it may be the case that it contains colors which cannot be represented on the target device. This is when a good imaging package gives you a gamut warning, along the lines of "Warning, the image contains colors which cannot be represented within the gamut of the target device".
:)
Also, gamut is fun to say. gamut gamut gamut.
-Adam
Emacs is for experts. Pico is for beginners. VI is a disease.
Well.. not neccicarily. I don't know if i agree with you or not because i don't know exactly what you mean.
The question becomes, _who is "they"?_ OK, so they should be held responsible. But who?
If someone who has entered into a beta liscence breaks the terms of that liscence, he has broken a contract and therefore the company he broke the contract with has every right to seek appropriate damages. [note that a statement like this does not neccicarily indicate i agree with shrinkwrap EULAs-- after all the way i see it, a beta tester is practically an employee of the company in question]
But if you ask me, if someone breaks a beta contract by giving out information, and someone else redistributes that information, the redistributor should __NOT__ be legally liable. They should have the basic right to release that information/screenshot, unless like they're violating copyright or something, and copyright does and should make exceptions for people "quoting" for review/journalism purposes.
I really believe MacNN should __NOT__ be held liable for violating a beta liscence unless they themselves violated the beta liscence. OK, i guess i'm a long-haired anti-IP extremist or something, but i see something inherently wrong with holding someone to the terms of a contract they were not parties to.
In short, the _person who wrote the article_, since they were the ones who entered and therefore the ones who violated the beta liscence, should be the one held liable, __NOT__ macnn. Macnn should be guiltless here and were if you ask me acting totally within their rights. The illegal act here should be the violation of the liscence, not the article about Photoshop 6.
Of course were the guy who wrote the article the liable one, i'd probably argue Macnn should pay his legal expenses out of common courtesy and because if they don't they'll never get another beta tester to trust them again, but it's all moot anyway because the whole thing will almost certainly be settled out of court.
Oh, btw, i thought this quote was funny from the article.
""It's rare that type of information is acquired by someone outside the company,"
MWAHAHAHAA!! Someone find the person who did this quote and introduce him to appleinsider.com, where you see things saying "we had screenshots of clarisworks 7 here, but apple legal made us take them down" on a regular basis.. "rare"? it's unbelievably common.
[and please do not mention MOSR in this place. MOSR _never_ says _anything_ that turns out to be accurate unless it can be attributed to the Thousand Monkeys With Typewriters Effect.]
But keep in mind the loophole these people find-- appleinsider almost invariably uses UNPAID, ANONYMOUS sources, therefore meaning that they themselves could not be said to be directly involved in the violation of the liscence; they just have some pictures and they're posting it. THe actual criminal is the source, who is anonymous and therefore never has anything done to them. The anonymous defence doesn't stop people from suing these sites, of course, but it should.
-mcc-baka
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS THEFT
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
ImageReady also . Just don't forget to add "alegal-" to the filename of the page you wanna go to.
-my parents got laid and all i got was this shitty life-
Of course you have that right - this is free speech. Now, if you had a contractual relationship with Adobe and your speech violates the terms of that contract, you may end up in court. But if you were to tell me a trade secret, I'm under no obligation to keep it a secret. It's Adobe's job and your job to keep their secrets secret, not mine.
The right to publish a work is protected by copyright law, and the right to use a particular technology is protected by patent law. If you want to protect the right to pass on ideas, some sort of contract is needed, and can only be enforced on signatories to the contract. So there's nothing to stop a third party from telling people what Photoshop 6 is like, displaying screenshots, etc.
The responsibility for keeping proprietary information secret falls on the company, not on the public at large. The government only supports certain kinds of protection for IP - patents, copyrights, and trademarks. If you don't want to register your work under those protections, it's up to you to keep your lips zipped. It's certainly not the fault of the press if one of the people you tell secrets to isn't very trustworthy.
IANAL, of course.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Somehow I doubt MacNN was a beta seed site for Adobe. If someone else broke their NDA, then Adobe needs to prove that they did it, but having received the information, MacNN was under no obligation to not publish the leak, nor are they obligated to reveal their source.
If Adobe can determine in another way who violated the NDA, or if MacNN chooses to reveal it (doubtful), then Adobe can sue for damages from breach of contract.
(IANALY)
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Unless Bhatia (of MacNN) is telling the truth and he came by the feature guide for PhotoShop 6.0 legally, Adobe is perfectly within their rights to sue the pants off MacNN. It's illegal to publish trade secrets which were illegally obtained (as would be the case if a disgruntled employee or ex-employee emailed them to MacNN).
OTOH, if Adobe screwed up and had the feature guide publically available on their website or something else equally stupid, MacNN is in the clear.
That's a very important point, and I imagine the court case will hinge upon that.
Adobe would LOVE it if they ran an article on Photoshop 6 if it was very good, but they obviously have as little enthusiasm and confidence in it as I do.
Although Adobe does have a right to sue - they now MAY lose product sales because of this (no one cares about Photoshop 6 because its nothing new), I think that they should get tossed out because the people have the right to know how a preview release operated.
Besides, what's the difference between a pre-release review that loses sales and a post-release review that loses sales? Not much. It would happen either time, and the only people that would buy the program on the day of its opening (before the poor reviews would come out) are the ones that would buy it anyway, even after the poor reviews come out.
On a sidenote - go gimp!
And another sidenote - this is the most pirated program in the world, EVER. Adobe should be doing other things in the legalroom. :)
Thanks if you're still reading
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) -GAIM: MicroBerto
Berto
While I think that Adobe has solid legal ground to sue in a situation such as this (and will probably win), I'm surprised that they would decide to sue. I've always thought that these sort of "sneak peak" reviews, authorized or not, have increased the hype about a product and as such probably helped sales. True, they might think that they are exposing their new features to the competition, but this probably isnt much of a worry in this case, since photoshop dominates the market.
I'm not saying that rumor sites are right to be doing these, but I guess it surprises me that Adobe takes much issue with it.
-Kyle
Actually, it very much does matter for freedom of press.
However, IIRC, in the P.A. tapes case, the ruling was such that the publisher (the video-tape distributor) had a very reasonable belief that tapes were authentically owned by the person who sold them. Of course, the person who stole the tapes in the first place is still civilly liable for that.
This is the key in cases like that - all the publisher has to do is prove that a reasonable person would believe that the source was providing information that wasn't illegally obtained. And the courts have given fairly wide lattitude on this issue (that is, they've erred on the side of the press).
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
#include "ianal.h"
As I understand things, if Acme Software leaked Adobe trade secrets to MacNN in violation of an NDA, and MacNN published them, both Acme and MacNN are liable. Trade secrets do not lose protection if they are stolen or otherwise illegally obtained.
I really doubt Adobe will win because this is extremely similar to when Ford Motors sued Blue Oval News for printing secret car designs on their website. Even though the car designs were secret and probably stolen by an employee who had signed an NDA, the website won.
The word "gamut" has its origins in Medieval music theory... In the Ancient Greek system, the lowest possible pitch is represented by the symbol gamma. Medieval theorists, when devising solfege ("do, a deer," etc.) used the term "ut" instead of do. "gamma ut" was the lowest possible version of "ut" in the current hexachord system, created by placing "ut" at the bottom of the possible range. (it's a really convoluted system) "gamma ut" was eventually contracted to gamut, and used to represent the entirety of the music range, and then went from there. Tinctoris
I'd be willing to be that this is a calculated move on the part of Adobe to drum up free publicity for Photoshop 6 at the expense of (or, for the paranoid, in collusion with) MacNN. Sure, it looks bad to us, but don't forget that the general public seems to think that IP laws are cool.
C'mon -- when the pages are still up at AppleInsider under slightly changed filenames, and someone posts the changed URLs to freaking Slashdot, which is of course a hush-hush underground site that nobody reads (where nobody == MAX_LONG, anyway), can you really believe the official story?
I've long suspected that "rumor sites" devoted to games and to other commercial, closed source software and hardware are basically paid shills for the industry, but rarely are they as ham-handed as this.
And yes, I like italics. John Dvorak is my spiritual master.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Look at this screenshot from the article - It shows the splash screen of "Pet Wolverine" (Imageready 3.0) with the words "Licensed to: AppleInsider" So someone using the AppleInsider name had to fill out everything required to get their name there, which I suspect includes the whole registration and "I will not relase this info" terms.
I just finished reading it, and didn't see anything all that negative about the article at all. In fact, it lists many improvements, although, certainly nothing to warrant a major upgrade in version - more like v5.6, but then again, 5.5 should've been 5.1. Whatever.
At the end of the article, in fact, it says:
--- quote ---
The release appears to be solid, and packs a number of additional refinements that are much to specific to detail in this report.
--- endquote ---
Not exactly a negative review, by any stretch of the imagination.
Hope MacNN wins
yeah, I like MacNN and all the dirt, gossip & rumor pages just as much as the next guy. Unfortunately, it comes down to intellectual property.
I can see 2 main reasons why Adobe would be pissed:
I like hearing new bits and pieces of stuff that's yet to come down the pike, but keep it real folks, and don't turn next year's super-cool stuff into vaporware.
- passion
Did MacNN sign a non-disclosure agreement(NDA)? If they did, then they are probably in violation. It is one thing to dislike a company for hijacking your software and hardware and using unfair business practices, it is another thing entirely to hate them for trying to protect their product's competitive edge by not telling other companies what features are in it before it even comes out! I know that if I spent 5 years developing a technology, was just putting the final touches on it, waiting to release it, and some spy from a big company, say Microsoft, but I don't care if it was Virginia Systems or my 3rd cousin, took my code, and put it into their product, before mine was released, I would be ultra-pissed. Plus, NDA's are serious business. If you are not going to be a good business partner, you won't continue to be a business partner.
Eh...
And another sidenote - this is the most pirated program in the world, EVER. Adobe should be doing other things in the legalroom.
My former employer bought Photoshop 5 on ebay (I know, I know, DUH) and when we received it, we saw it was very definitely a copy. So he called Adobe and tried to report it. They did nothing. ??? Apparently they're not too worried about piracy, just initial sales, which is what this leak may have hurt.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
I worked for a software company that made consumer type publishing programs and clip art. They were *extremely* tight lipped about anything about upcoming products. It was entirely need-to-know. The people testing the clip art packages wouldn't be told what the final number on the page would be (x thousand images inside!!!). Customer service would be told about it about a day before it hit the shelves. In one case, someone called for tech support on a product and tech support told him they couldn't support it because they hadn't received word that it had been released.
Now, photoshop isn't in as competetive a market as clip art or Print Shop type programs. It's not like someone is going to be able to take any action based on knowing about Photoshop 6's features a month early. But maybe they can. Their competitors (which would be....ummm... still thinking...) will be able to say "here's where photoshop 6 is weak. Concentrate on making this feature kick ass. Add in this little tweak." They'll have a little extra time to react. And that's why Adobe requires NDAs for beta testers. They can't do much, but they can decide where to concentrate their last minute features effort. They can kill off a feature they are having trouble with if they see that photoshop won't have it either. They can decide what to highlight on the box. They can decide how to market it.
What, do you think that there are people who sell something that competes with Photoshop isn't just drooling over this article? Jasc Paint Shop Pro will be looking at this. The makers of Debabelizer will be reading this with a magnifying glass.
Imagine this situation: you're releasing a publishing program soon. Your competitors are as well. You learn through some source like this that the competitor will be including 1200 different greeting card designs. You had planned for 1000 in your product. What do you do? Obviously, you work the designers overtime or you push the date a little bit, because you *can't* release something that's inferior to the competition.
--Kevin
A similar story is running over at MacSlash. I just discovered the site and it is looking good. Their insights and comments appear quite relevant. Does anyone know much about it? I figure it is like Slashdot for Mac users. Very cool.
Note: IANAL, and this information comes from talking with several IP and publishing lawyers. It applies only inside the USA.
Newspapers (and others) cannot publish anything they receieve. Legally, a publisher is responsible for checking the validity of the source, and cannot hide behind the "oh, well, my such-and-such source said so" shield.
Publishers (and reporters, too) have the following responsibilities when receiving information from a source:
Under number 1 and 2, the publisher is criminally liable - instance number 1 is a felony in most places, 2 is a misdemenor. Essentially, in the first you are actually committing a crime, and the second you are an accessory-after-the-fact.
Instance 3 and 4 fall into civil areas (as can 1, in addition to criminal), and generally are covered in Libel and Slander laws.
Trade secrets that are obtained by a third party, who then illegally reveals them to a publisher, which publishes them, are most certainly covered by #2. However, the sticking point is as always the possibility that the publisher can make a case that it reasonably believed that the information was obtained by the third party legally. The previous brouhah here over the MS Kerberos Spec is a good case for the latter - there is a considerable case for the publisher believing that the poster (an AC) could have bypassed the legalities requiring non-disclosure, and thus, could legally post the article.
Please, folks, two things:
This isn't about censorship
Free Speech is not absolute
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
The issue here isn't censorship or free speech at all. An agreement was made between Adobe and Person X, and Person X violated the terms of the agreement.
That's just it. Person X violated the terms of the agreement. Not MacNN, which never signed that agreement. All Adobe has the right to do is ask MacNN to pull the article, and demand that MacNN provide contact information for their source. Then they can sue the source, who's the one that violated the agreements.
But honestly, I almost wonder if a class-action suit should be brought on the software industry by its users. We buy and pay for their software. They owe us a look into where the products we paid for, and will be paying for again to upgrade, will be going. So what if competitors know what features will be in your software; merely knowing of the existence of a feature doesn't help you in developing a counter-feature of your own. Software will always improve, and as the ones who are paying the software companies' bills we have a right to know what they're doing with our money.
If I don't agree with the GPL, and don't sign anything... I can break the license.
BlackNova Traders
A lot of people hear been badmouthing Adobe's motivation in trying to do something about this leak, but the truth is, it costs a company a bunch of money to think up features. Implementing them is often the easier portion of production.
Is it too much to imagine that enterprising managers at JASC software and Corel and the folks involved in the gimp can extrapolate these features and beat Adobe to market? Photoshop is dramatically more complex than any of these other products, simply by way of their pre-press precision and color modelling. But as most consumers only want web graphic editors, beating Adobe to market with their own refinements is a piece of cake.
This could be a major hit in the pocketbook, if you can imagine that ceratin features and refinements may sway the purchasing dollars of hundreds, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people. The managers at Adobe have an obligation to protect that potential revenue for the investors.
Those of you that can't see this are certainly not cut out to run a corporation. Not yet anyway. maybe after college you can cut your teeth on a small department, but don't run crying to momma when everything falls to crap around you. seen it a million times already (in other managers) and I'm not even 30 yet!!!
By way of disclaimer, I am not affiliated with Adobe or any other companies in this market, merely a critical, semi-aware observer.
:)Fudboy
:)Fudboy
I guess I'm only a Fudboy, looking for that real Transmeta
Adobe says both the existence of the new versions of its products -- Adobe Photoshop 6.0 and Adobe ImageReady 3.0 -- and their features are trade secrets.
/. is going to be hit with another cease and desist order.
Really good trade secrets too. Let's see, Adobe has released Photoshops 1-5. They also employ a bunch of programmers. There are two possibilities:
1) they are working on Photoshop 6.
2) oh wait, there's only one possibility.
Real nice secret guys.
I hear MS is working on a new version of office - oops, now
Adobe requests the court to enjoin Macintosh News Network from soliciting or disclosing Adobe's trade secrets and for recovery of damages which it says "could conservatively amount to tens of millions of dollars."
I say that's a conservative estimate, nothing pisses of Wall Street more than shipping a new version of a flagship product. I bet their stock tanked after this leak.
The complaint says, "Adobe will suffer lost sales of products currently on the market.
Totally believable -- I only buy software if I'm sure that the company has cancelled all future development efforts.
Hear that? That's the last few shreds of my faith in human intelligence being stripped from me.
--Shoeboy
(former microserf)