"Eric Stevens" wrote

| the reality is that 'ultred' doesn't have a license and is pirating
it.
|
| Is he even using it?
|
| he claims to have used it, however, that's irrelevant. since he never
| bought it in the first place, he is not entitled to legally download
| it.
|
| That applies to most people.

Why are so many people always so quick to
go on a witch hunt when it comes to "pirating"
software? It's not clear what the OP did. It's not
relevant to his question. And the CS2 download
was, indeed, legal for a period of time. I saw the
page when they posted it. They included a legal
ditty that said, specifically, that it was only
legal to use the software if it was obtained
directly from Adobe. That was it.

They gave it away. They said they were giving
it away. They gave away a working key along with
it.

In any retail store, even if it were a mistake,
the store would be expected to honor such an offer.
I'm not convinced it was a mistake. Companies don't
"mistakenly" put together a web site and free
software offer.
They also claimed it was about
a problem with activation servers. It's their responsibility
to operate the servers. If they won't then they should
give it away. The weird way it all went down may have
been an attempt to sidestep that issue. The likes of
Adobe and MS surely don't want a court case about
their responsibilities involved with activation-crippled
software. On the other hand, they'd like to keep milking
software they no longer support.
(When MS started "product activation" with XP they
put out the word that when XP went unsupported they'd
"probably" issue a universal key. But XP turned out to
be popular. MS still don't dare to give it away, lest it
have a resurgence.)

But all that's beside the point. Adobe gave away CS2.
Period.

And no one needs to take my word for it. Look it
up. The articles from the time all say basically the
same thing: Adobe gave it away. Downloads were
extremely numerous. Adobe then backtracked and said,
"Oh. We didn't mean it was free." Then they put
up a page to require getting a "membership" in order
to download. It all looks like a planned marketing
ploy to me. No one using it professionally would
have bothered downloading CS2 at that point. But
it *could* be used as a free trial to get new customers
hooked -- which is a common strategy. And if Adobe
wanted to do such a marketing campaign, how else
could they do it?

So was it marketing? Was it a legal step to get out
of running activation servers? Who knows? But I don't
see the logic in villifying someone who walked past
a supermarket, saw a table full of steaks with a sign
that said, "Free. Help Yourself.", and then took some
steaks. If the supermarket meant they were free only
to people who had already paid for them then the
sign should have said that. And there should have been
a clerk at the table.

It seems to be a quirk of the American psyche that
we love a witch hunt. The mob wants to decide who's
the evil one and pass harsh judgement, so we can be
sure we're safe.