CMU School of Drama


Thursday, January 29, 2015

Adobe is suing Forever 21 for pirating Photoshop

The Verge: Forever 21 has been pirating photoshop, according to a new lawsuit from Adobe, and it's facing serious fines as a result. The suit was filed yesterday in California District Court, alleging that Forever 21 pirated 63 different instances of Adobe software including copies of Photoshop, Acrobat, and Illustrator.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Woah! Drama with Forever 21 and the infamous Adobe. Aren't torrents supposed to make the un-wealthy world a better place to give those with the unfortunate opportunity to use software that would usually be unavailable to them? Obviously not when it's illegal and is being used for advertising with a popular company. I'm not surprised that Forever 21 happened to get caught for this action. However, a company this big should've known better. I wish I knew more of what they are talking about with the miss use of Adobe software, because they said it wasn't clear. So how exactly did they get full documentations of this? I mean if it is causing this much trouble why doesn't Adobe higher a "hacker" to hack in the torrent system and take away any torrents that are messing with Adobe's profit? It may not be easy, but it's definitely possible. But torrenting is such a common thing nowadays that if companies are upset about their profit they should've made changes to the system before thousands of downloads were made.

Zara Bucci said...

In this instance I believe that both parties are at fault. Photoshop has created new software that has the opportunity to be easily manipulated. Given that opportunity, many companies, just like Forever XXI, are going to pirate and steal certain software programs until they are made unable to do so- regardless of the Photoshop companies warning. However, I don’t agree with various companies taking advantage of a glitch in the system to benefit themselves. Forever XXI is a large name brand and has a huge following. They previously went though a large case regarding the creator of the company’s views on religion and how the company now freely supports Christianity in the public eye. It’s a shame that on top of all of that they now have this situation weighing down on them. I believe that Forever XXI as well as various companies alike should re compensate Photoshop and give the credit where the credit is due.

Katie Pyne said...

There's a difference between pirating Photoshop when you're a starving artist and when you're a giant corporation who has advertisements as far as the eye can see. Honestly, Forever 21 had and currently has enough money to purchase Photoshop legally. My question is why did they choose to pirate it? There's a nice link to the additions of Photoshop to the Creative Suite, which I now understand is a monthly subscription service. Well, that's just how it goes, Forever21. Just because you didn't want Photoshop to move over to Creative Suite doesn't mean you cant pirate it. You're subject to Adobe's changes. And even though Forever21 received multiple warnings from Adobe themselves, they continued to use it. Now, this just looks bad on Forever 21's end. Now that Adobe is suing Forever 21, I believe that they have a right to those profits. This isn't one designer torrenting software, this is an entire company. They're well within their right to go after Forever21. Serves them right.

Monica Skrzypczak said...

It really confuses me as to why such a big name company would think to resort to pirating photoshop. It’s not as if they have a lack of funds that would make buying it too expensive. I can understand a single student or a single artist torrenting photoshop- they don’t have the fund because of school or trying to make it in the world, but in my opinion there is absolutely no reason for a big company to do the same. And it’s different when a single person gets busted for torrenting software and when a company does. This will make Forever 21 look bad for a long time. They should just compensate Adobe for the stolen technology and not try to fight this because it already looks bad enough and they will just look like jerks if they try to cast the blame on someone else or try to say they did not pirate the software.

Fiona Rhodes said...

Wow. Forever 21 is running on pirated software? Really? I wish the article had elaborated more on how they found out that Forever 21 was using pirated software, and why they didn’t do anything before. I know that since moving their programs to the cloud, companies have been struggling with pirated software. However, how can they stop that from happening? I agree with Hannah that a company the size of Forever 21 should have known better. I don’t see how they would justify pirating the software when they are a large enough brand making enough profit to pay for legitimate programs. Why did they pirate the software instead of purchasing it? I’d be interested to see how the lawsuit ends, because it may be that the company loses more in the lawsuit over the pirated software than it would have by simply purchasing a licensed version of the software they needed.