I had an interesting experience this morning. I think the Adobe Corporation is spying on me. Am I paranoid?
I'm working on a little personal publishing project that needed a couple of graphics. It was nothing complicated. Just a couple of diagrams that amounted to simple polygons with measurements noted to the side. (See illustration)
I don't have anything like Autocad (does anybody use that anymore?) or even Illustrator on my desktop. And the shapes function in my word processor wasn't going to do the job.
But I do have a subscription to Adobe Photoshop's cloud-based program. I wouldn't normally subscribe to software. I believe in owning. But Photoshop is very expensive, and I just can't afford to buy the CS suite. It's the photo editor I'm most proficient with. I'm really good with Photoshop. So, even though I could use something more consumer-, rather than pro-oriented, I like having Photoshop at my fingertips.
I bought the subscription after my ancient personal copy of Photoshop stopped working. (Yes, I paid for it once, about 15-20 years ago. But to keep it working you have to keep buying updates and $250-$300 a year got too expensive after a while.)
Anyway, last year, I got an offer from Adobe for the full version of Photoshop, with several other coordinating apps for about $10 a month. Even though I hate the idea of subscribing to software, I decided it was worth it just to be able to go back to using my favorite photo editor.
So, this morning, I was somewhat awkwardly using Photoshop for a task that would be much better done in something like Illustrator or some other vector graphic program. But, I'm really good with Photoshop, so I did accomplish what I needed to do.
Then, I hear my email notification. I've got a spam email from Adobe telling me I could make graphics for presentations very easily with another program they offer.
I don't get a steady stream of spam from Adobe. This can't have been a coincidence.
As I use their cloud-based version of Photoshop, they are not only keeping track of the fact I'm using it, they're looking over my shoulder to see what I'm doing with it.
This may make me give up Photoshop. I love it for photo editing. The price is at a level I can handle. But I don't think any corporation has a right to look over my shoulder when I'm doing personal projects.
Of course there's no practical harm from this example. I just put one of the diagrams I made this morning at the top of this diary. It's a pretty generic thing. I might even have found a useable version of what I needed with a Google image search. Nobody is going to come after me because I'm drawing the shapes of pieces in a knitting pattern that I'm writing.
But I can easily extrapolate this situation to something that could be extremely harmful. For example: What if rather than drawing the shapes of pieces of a cardigan, I was diagramming my brilliant invention that is going to replace fossil fuel, save the world, and make me billions of dollars? Could Adobe steal my idea, cut me out and make the billions for Adobe instead? Could they inform on me to BP or Exxon and see to it that I can never get my product to market?
"The cloud" is the enemy of intellectual property. As the major software providers move to the cloud model, we are being denied the ability to use a computer for anything we would like to keep to ourselves, even temporarily.
I can't disconnect from the Internet and use my Photoshop subscription in privacy. I always save my final drawing or photo to my own hard drive, not the cloud, but I am still compelled to have it on their server while I'm working on it.
Cloud storage seems to make sense (depending on how you look at it) for photo storage. I've lost precious digital photos because of hard drive failure. Photos are large files and over a lifetime of taking snapshots you're going to need more and more storage.
But at the same time, we can thank the existence of cloud storage for a lot of embarrassing personal photos (of celebrities and regular people) that have made it into the public space.
I've never taken or allowed to be taken any nude photos of myself. Nobody wants that. Believe me.
But if I should develop a desire for nude personal photography, I ought to be able to indulge in it without fear that my photos are going to be on the bulletin board at the grocery store the next time I go shopping. The only way I can ever be sure of this is to make sure my photos are ONLY stored on media that I own and for which I can control access.
There's a whole type of laptop out there now that doesn't even have a hard drive. Just solid state memory holding the boot system. You can't use it without connecting to the Internet. I don't own a Chromebook, and as long as there are alternatives, I won't. When I boot up my laptop and start on the draft of my next great Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel, I want to be sure that nobody is reading it until I'm ready.
Stop looking over my shoulder, Internet!