Adobe shuts down Photoshop in Venezuela

BBC ^ | 10/08/19

[minnesota_bound]

Called GIMP
https://www.gimp.org/

[Spktyr]

Yup, but given the ‘comedians’ we have around here, I wasn’t going to be the one using the official acronym first...

[Spktyr]

Here’s the direct link. https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/13884.pdf

Section 3 is what you’re looking for.

Sec. 3. The prohibitions in section 1 of this order include: (a) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; and (b) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

Adobe software is currently being sold as a service.

[Spktyr]

You’re actually (apparently) confusing two separate issues here afflicting Adobe products.

Primarily the issue here is that Adobe has been selling their recent software as a service or subscription. This means that the software can be turned off by Adobe at any time for no good reason. It is no longer possible to get a standalone retail copy of Photoshop or any other major Adobe software, you can only buy a subscription/’rent’ the software. Adobe has had to turn this off for Venezuelans.

You can hopefully see the problem. When you don’t own your software or at least have a perpetual license, the real owners can turn it off and then you’re screwed. Oh, did you vote for Trump or $candidatewehatetoday? So sorry, we’re kicking you off.

Second, the cloud storage issues. Adobe often packages a cloud storage service with the rental of software, and of course they’re turning that off too for the Venezuelans. So the Venezuelans have to get all their work off the cloud storage system before that access is cut. Have fun figuring out where to store that when nobody will ship hard drives into Venezuela...

But similar problems exist for cloud storage in the US, even more so. Cloud storage company goes out of business or company has six bad quarters and decides to drop their cloud storage line like a bad memory? Sorry, your data is gone. Company decides to emulate FaceBook and kill your account based on your expressed political preferences? Data’s gone. Your internet connection down because a squirrel ate the line? Welp, your data is effectively gone until your internet connection comes back up, save for what few local copies you have. Oh, and at many cloud storage companies, the employees *can* see all your stuff whether they admit it or not.

Cloud storage should almost never be the primary data storage mechanism for important personal data. This is why Network Attached Storage devices have become wildly popular in homes, with their potential RAID 5 protection of data, combined with a rational on-site backup system and off-site (hopefully encrypted) backup to cloud storage. Do that and you will have more reliable access to your data than any cloud service can deliver - simply due to the fact that you are dependent on a consumer grade internet connection that is laughably unstable compared to local Ethernet and NAS.