Photoshop Express EULA Problems: Leggo Mai Pixx!

This weekend, I planned on spending some time playing around with the new Photoshop Express, an on-line photo editing, storage and sharing application similar to the like of Picasa and Flickr, but with the name and power of Photoshop. I was curious to see what they could bring to the table, what they might be able to offer to me that the offer photo sites haven't. At best, I was hoping for easy editing, at worst I was expecting the same old song an dance. But I didn't try the service. In fact, I'm a bit leery to give it a shot now and have delayed my trial of the service until Adobe fixes what many (including myself) have perceived as an egregious affront to the end user.

A few careful early subscribers did their due diligence and read the entirety of the EULA (End User License Agreement), and what to their wandering eyes did they find? A quaint little clause stating that Adobe has full rights to any and all images uploaded to their service, and what's more, the user who uploaded the image has no rights or claims to any royalties or even credit if said photo is used by Adobe. That's neat. That family pic you just uploaded could be on the next boxed retail version of Photoshop, and you wouldn't see a dime for it, much less receive credit for your work. It's an interesting tactic, and one that definitely separates Photoshop Express from its competitors in this crowded market, like Flickr that lets you decided what kind or license to release your pics under, if any at all.

Look Adobe, I know you're giving us a "free" service, but that doesn't mean you can haz all mai fotozz!! More seriously, this speaks to either one of two problems, either of which is seriously neglect: 1) The company simply overlooked that piece of the EULA for final release, intending to remove it or it was a hangover from some other program, or 2) Adobe was really trying to pull one over on their customers with this clause, hoping no one would notice it. We saw a similar issue with Apple's Safari for Windows EULA last week, and I'm starting to wonder if the economic downturn has really started to stress the legal departments of our tech companies?

Adobe has promised to revise the selected section of the EULA, but I have a hard time lending faith to the statements of companies until I see it in action. If they do actually change it to something less, I don't know, ridiculous, I will probably still give Photoshop Express a shot, but definitely not until then.

Adboe joins list of companies not reading own EULAs