I have seen problematic lizensing clauses for this product mentioned only in a German newspaper:

"... Adobe darf:
mit �ffentlichen Fotos der Nutzer "Einnahmen erzielen".
diese Bilder "reproduzieren, ver�ndern, ver�ffentlichen" und in "anderen Materialien oder Arbeiten in jedem Format und Medium" verwenden
das Bildmaterial "an Dritte weiterlizenzieren"
Diese Lizenz l�sst sich Adobe weltweit einr�umen.
gilt "unbefristet" und "unab�nderlich".
gew�hrt der Lizenzgeber, ohne daf�r Geb�hren zu erhalten.

Adobe darf Nutzerfotos weiterverkaufen

Eine Anfrage von SPIEGEL ONLINE zu diesen Klauseln konnte Adobe bis zur Ver�ffentlichung dieses Artikel nicht beantworten. M�glicherweise sichert sich Adobe �ber diese Klausel nur eine Weitergabe von Screenshots an Agenturen zwecks Werbung f�r Adobe ab. ..."

It basically means that Adobe can generate an income from these user derived pictures without compensating them for it. If this is meant as a right to advertize for the product with screenshots of user images was not clarified by Adobe.
So watch out before you use it for your precious Microstock pictures.

You have to explicitly choose to make your photos public ...

Adobe are rip offs for what they charge for European customers.

PS CS3 xtended is 1000$ in the US, and 2000$ in Europe. Try to buy in the US and you get redirected to the EU sales sites since they redirect according to IP number.

Adobe and Microsoft are both figuring out that they are in trouble if they don't change their ways.  As computers grow up and each successive generation is more and more computer savvy they are running into this dilemma:

The vast majority of programmers (especially younger generations) lump software into 3 main categories: computer necessary, income generating, and entertainment.  And they strongly feel that:

Computer necessary software should be free at the consumer level (or very marginally priced)(different for the buisiness level).  This includes the OS, drivers, burning programs, productivity software, browsers, email, basically everything necessary for normal computer operation, or consumer level apps of business software.

Income generating software is a business expense for companies and this is where software companies should be making their money.  This includes the OS, productivity software, email, and specialized software (The full version of Photoshop is included here).

Entertainment software should be free except for the engine.  This is the most well developed of all (no coincidence that a decent % of the best programmers are game makers and hence they have pricing figured out).  They sell you the game engine, but encourage free modding of the game to add to it, expansion packs are tweaks to the game engine itself.  It is entirely possible to greatly expand any popular game for free with readily available mods, it is encouraged as it makes the game engine more popular.

What this means is that there are a lot of highly skilled programmers, some of the best, that are willing to work as a community to offer free software to the public for personal use to take down the companies that gouge computer users.  Microsoft and Adobe are targets #1 and #2.

Photoshop has the growing Gimp problem, and all of Microsoft's products and Adobe's Acrobat have readily available free (open source) competition that often times is better that Microsoft or Adobe's products (a social network of many of the best programmers has no problem coming up with something better over time).

Vista and XP compete with Linux
MS Office competes against Open Office
IE competes against Firefox
Outlook and Lotus' Notes competes against Thunderbird
Acrobat competes against CutePDF and many others.

At first this was just a minor thorn in the big boys sides, but younger generations are far more computer savvy (find a teenager that can't readily write HTML code), and they think like the programmers, and not only prefer to use the free software, but contribute as well.  Most feel that the big boys purposely write buggy software to force upgrades in the future (Vista's big thing is security, closing the OS-IE hole that FF closed with XP).

Firefox was the breaking point, when it was introduced it was clearly superior to IE, and for most people it still is to this day.

But Open Office can do virtually everything that MS Office can (especially for consumer level users), and it has a snappier, nicer interface (which can also be modded).

Good luck crashing a Linux system, the "blue screen of death" is virtually unheard of with Linux users, and performance does not decline over time like is does with windows (though XP was by far the most stable OS Microsoft introduced, if XP would have been like ME, Linux would probably be winning right now).

With how much MS and Adobe have been defeated by free software, especially among younger generations (who are growing up), they needed to do something to stem the tide against their big money stuff.

MS solidified their hold on the OS market by buying up a bunch of the best game makers, making sure that the best games are only for Microsoft OS's and difficult to port to Linux, if they lost the gamers they would be in trouble (cascading effect since for the most part gamers decide the fate of the computer industry).

IE is a lost cause, there is no stopping Firefox

The legislation forcing companies to maintain email records for a number of years kept Thunderbird out of business computers, giving a big boost to Lotus's Notes, though IBM (Lotus) is an active open source contributer and is integrating Open Office in Notes.

Acrobat is dead as consumer level software (it was the first one attacked), though it is still going strong in the business market.

Online office is IMO an attempt to defeat Open Office, as many consumers aren't willing to shell out the $200 necessary to get Word and Excel, especially when they can get a free program that can do everything they need.

Digicams are becoming more and more popular, and the public is beginning to realize that image editing software is a necessary thing, and the open source community has create The Gimp.  Adobe is attempting to stop that from seriously eating into PS by offering a virtually free version of the software for consumers, while moving the full version more solidly into the professional arena (and further classifying it not as consumer level software, thus easily justifying cranking up the price).  As more and more people eschew paying for software and move towards software like The Gimp, the program will grow stronger faster and faster and could eventually overtake PS, something that would be very bad for Adobe.  Preventing the growth of the Gimp IMO is the primary reason for online PS (not stealing peoples photos), just as stopping the growth of Open Office is MS's true intention for the online Office release. 

Quote from: Waldo4 on April 03, 2008, 12:26

Acrobat competes against CutePDF and many others.

Foxit reader (free) is a way, way better option than Adobe's also free, but horribly bloated PDF reader.

Does it have the ability to create and edit?, which Adobe's free version cannot do.  If you want to do that, gotta go pro for $400.00.  CutePDF is a PDF printer, it can turn anything printable into a PDF.