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Adobe’s taking a stand against pirated copies of its software. No matter what the form of media–film, music, software, books–there’s someone who stands to... Adobe’s Polite Reminder To Stop Pirating Software

Adobe’s taking a stand against pirated copies of its software.

No matter what the form of media–film, music, software, books–there’s someone who stands to make a quick buck off a pirated version of it. Whether it’s bootleg movies actually filmed in the darkness of a theater or ebooks that have been reformatted and uploaded to shady download sites, piracy is such a part of multimedia content that even the efforts to combat it might seem a little half-hearted.

adobe

But Adobe’s taking a stand against pirated copies of its software…sort of.

Adobe has begun issuing popup warnings on computers that are running pirated copies of its Acrobat X software. These popups, which aren’t even affecting popular stolen downloads like Photoshop yet, are simply meant to inform the user that his computer is running an illegal version of the software, while highlighting some of the dangers of doing so (ie, malicious software bundled with it). The company has been quick to point out that there are no legal ramifications or spy-like tracking of who’s been naughty, just a polite reminder of the dangers and a request that the user use a verified version.

TorrentFreak had an interesting view on how this will affect consumers: “Aside from a few recent complaints about the pop-up there hasn’t been much backlash, which could mean that the program is still gearing up, and not operating at full swing just yet.

Um…complaints? Of course. But not in the way you might think. Sure, it seems just like people to illegally download a cheap knock-off version of a really expensive piece of uber-powerful software, then complain about an innocuous popup box. But no, so far it’s been people who’ve been running what they believe to be licensed copies of their Adobe software, but who then receive the anti-piracy warning after (you guessed it) upgrading to Windows 10.