Adobe found themselves in incredibly piping hot water recently thanks to a quirky update to their Terms of Service. Said update has apparently been floating around since February of this year, but it came to everyone's attention in the mainstream when Adobe pushed out a notification to Photoshop users informing them that unless they agree to a TOS update they won't be able to use the product anymore (which as we all know, is paid software). No big deal, just agree, right? Unfortunately the issue is that this change allows Adobe to access any work completed using their product suite. This seemingly includes interesting purposes like training AI and bypasses a ton of NDA restrictions as much work completed using Adobe is for government or business purposes. The pop-up can be read below.
So why am I here talking about it? Well as it turns out, Adobe is actually used a lot in the manga world. Translating, editing, and other similar steps in the doujin processing pipeline incorporate Adobe products which means that they can now snoop in on whatever wacky doujins we may have people working on. Not just us of course, anyone who uses Adobe software to aid in some sort of creative process involving manga, doujins, lewd images, or similar naughty endeavors is basically dealing with spyware at this point. As you can imagine the backlash for such an invasive change was tremendous and people lambasted Adobe on X. When you have manga nerds and business executives uniting to attack you, ya done goofed. Hopefully Adobe will see the uproar and quickly reverse or rewrite the terms to restore some semblance of privacy for their users who actually pay top dollar for their products. Then again Microsoft got called out for their implementation of near spyware in recent Windows updates but they don't seem to be bothered at all. On the bright side, people began compiling helpful infographics of potential tools that could replace the utility in the suite of Adobe’s offerings. One such example is posted below.
It pains me to see the people who put in good work to bring doujins to us impacted in a negative way. Here's hoping they backpedal or the people using their products can find quick and effective alternatives. Have you heard about Adobe's invasive update? Did you realize it affected people working with doujins? Are you using Adobe products? Open up Photoshop, change the terms of service with an image editor, and play an Uno reverse card in the comments below!
UPDATE: Adobe attempted to clarify the situation in a blog post on June 6. They claim they don’t intend to use the access for AI training, but do need it for several Cloud-related features. They also claim their main intention is to scan work for illegal materials. Adobe said they won’t ever claim ownership of any work. Some consumers seemed to appreciate the clarification and return to work, others said the damage was already done and that this move, regardless of how much it changed or didn’t, clearly shows the direction Adobe is heading in. I’ll leave that up to the individuals who use the software to make a choice.
