Wish This Was Photoshopped

As a modern man, I’ve had to learn how to get things done for myself. And like most children of the Internet Age, one of the main tools in my utility belt is Adobe Creative Suite.

I can’t count the number of JPGs I’ve right-click-saved off Google Search results, then vectorized and recolored in Illustrator as a shortcut to get my visions out into the world without the need to gather any bonafide “creative” skills. Never mind the many real creators out there for whom these apps are as necessary as canvases or paintbrushes.

But they’re also, well, apps. Web2 apps, to boot. And so it’s no surprise — albeit entirely a slap in the face — that Adobe recently updated their software licensing agreement requires users to sign aways usage rights of all works created using their tools.

Now, I like to think I understand the value capture game that powers our economy better than your average bear. But it’s myopic bullshit like this that has the Zoomers droning on about late stage capitalism. This is a textbook version of short-term value extraction, in exchange for long-term damage.

Given its Internet Age ubiquity, not to mention its impressive strides in the AI arms race, Adobe appeared well-positioned to be the suite powering the coming paradigm shift to the Creator Economy. But, to paraphrase James Collins’ Good to Great, it takes visionary leaders at the helms of these organizations to realize the true markets they’re in, rather than simply identifying the quickest path to profit, without stopping to think where it might ultimately lead.

Adobe eventually backpedaled, releasing several vague apologies before finally rectifying the change with new, plain-English terms. But the damage might already be done, with plenty of users responding negatively to the revised terms as well, suggesting trust in the brand might be permanently broken. It doesn’t help that the government is suing Adobe for lack of transparency — related to their subscription model rather than their Terms of Use, but to disgruntled customers, the nuance might not mean a thing.

As web3 approaches and web2 tech giants are gradually replaced by disruptor brands, we might see a sea change for creative tools, too. My bet would be on a company like Canva to evolve into a true competitor to Adobe in the space. And my unofficial advice to a company like that would be to tokenize the outputs of their tools, assign ownership rights directly to their users, and create a licensing process to train their proprietary AI.

In other words, the path to becoming a leader in the Creator Economy might be to collaborate directly with said creators while advancing the technology in a mutually beneficial way — rather than, you know, explicitly screwing them over and trying to trick them into paying you every month for it.

Of course, these are just my thoughts in the moment. Talk to me again next week. By then, I may have already started GIMP DAO.

—El Prof