Adobe Is Deleting Accounts Of Persons in Venezuela Under the Thinly-Veiled Smear Guise of [Fake] Compliance with Trump's Executive Order 13884. I'll Explain Adobe cancels all user accounts in Venezuela to comply with Trump order >> Adobe interprets Trump order broadly, claims it can't provide refunds. Adobe is deactivating all user accounts in Venezuela, saying that the action is necessary to comply with an executive order issued by President Donald Trump. The action affects both free and paid accounts. In an FAQ titled "Adobe compliance with US Executive Order," the company explained yesterday why it is canceling its Venezuela-based customers' subscriptions: The US Government issued Executive Order 13884, the practical effect of which is to prohibit almost all transactions and services between US companies, entities, and individuals in Venezuela. To remain compliant with this order, Adobe is deactivating all accounts in Venezuela. The last sentence, is--of course--false.  Adobe lawyers want us to believe they misread or the language makes them required to block adobe accounts. They're wrong.  This is a political stunt to smear POTUS and induce a class action lawsuit against the USGOV because of Trump's EO, under the thin-veil of a "too close reading" Executive Order 13884: Executive Order on Blocking Property of the Government of Venezuela The exectutive order blocks THE VENEZUELAN GOVERNMENT and those 'certain persons contributing to the situation in Venezuela'.  Which, we assume rightly (and legally) excludes Adobe corporation (Unless Photoshop has a "convert to socialist" layer filter, which it forking does not).  See for yourselves I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America...national emergency declared...(Blocking Property and Suspending Entry of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Venezuela)... ...Section 1.  (a)  All property and interests in property of the Government of Venezuela that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of any United States person are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in. Adobe may have considered that "all accounts owned by persons who are citizens of Venezuela" have suddenly and inextricably (as in through a process of law that does not exist) come under ownership of the Venezuelan socialist government.  And that is not true.  Adobe made a contract with persons in Venezuela, implying that the ownership was made UNDER US CONTRACT LAW, not some other law.  Venezuelan citizens, regardless of their own country's form of governance has no bearing.  They have property by contract.  Unless these citizens in VEnezuela forfeited or nullified their contract by signing another contract with the Venezuelan socialist government, reassigning ownership to the Government of Venezuela, then the original contract remains---a contract with a global foreign person owning limited access to Adobe property with all copyrights, trademarks and derivative works belonging to the copyrightholder which would be the person using the software TLDR:  NOTHING CHANGES because of Venezuela's State-change, per section 1a Let's look at section 1b "Persons" Firstly, Adobe--the corporation--IS technically a "person" due to the legal definition of corporate personhood.  In this context, it could be legally debated one way or the other, should Adobe take up that cause.  But if Adobe is using this legal definition of "person" in order to shirk it's obligation to it's accountholders and instead are "simply settling" with corporate "person"--as if to say 'there it is, it says person. debate over. we have to delete all of venezueala'....in order to induce animus against Trumps' administration by proxy and by weaponizging those adobe accountholders in Venezuela against the US corporation, it's a pretty callous and sociopathic legal contrivance.   It would be cruel and unusual, to try to punish people in order to induce lawfare against the country of the US, but maybe that's what Adobe has done.  Specifically, it would be because "F Trump" and to "win political points for the left".  It's very shortsighted of the leadership of these increasingly gaslit and deranged Silicon Valley companies. Because Adobe corp--As far as we know--has had nothing to do with regime change, politics, governance, the Venezuelan government or military; and therefore it's inapplicable per the language of the EO.   And it would be foolish to assume that Trump's Dept of Justice would go after them, when historically it's been sitting on its hands regarding major cases of white collar crimes having to do with tech companies.  They dont' seem to want to mess with "innovation" even when it's killing their own side, politically.   So if history is any indicator, Adobe is totatlly safe from one torpid, incompetent, unwilling and/or inert Bill Barr. And if someone in the Maduro administration had USED Adobe photoshop--for example to craft and desseminate socialist propaganda--then it's THAT "PERSON" specficially that is culpable--as in that Adobe accountholder or software licenseholder specificially--that would be blocked per the language of this EO Again, I'm not a lawyer, but I can think logically and read English and know enough of the legal language to navigate this nonsense.  Please don't troll me by throwing this back in my face ("see!  he admits he's not a lawyer, therefore he's FALSE"--save that pseudoskepticism for reddit please.  and thank you.) Sec. 6.  For the purposes of this order: (a)  the term “person” means an individual or entity; (b)  the term “entity” means a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization; An account to Adobe is not a partnership or any other type of organization because it does not signal the intent of either or both party to form a revenue earning business together.  Instead, the relationship is a Business to a PATRON, CLIENT or CUSTOMER or LEASEE.  The revenue flows in one direction, the SERVICE flows in the revers.  The arrangement is for SERVICES RENDERED.  .... NOT a partnership.  Big difference.  HUGE in the eyes of the legal system Thus Adobe is protesting about something they've gotten completely wrong.  Legally wrong.  I believe they did it on purpose.   Other Sections Section 2 is about immigration and has nothing to do with Software.  Adobe corporation the legal person resides in legal imagination, or specifically it's legal country, state and address which it was formed, which I believe is in the United States, San Jose California, thus it stands to reason that Adobe corporation is a US citizen and cannot immigrate from Venezuela.  Again, not a lawyer Section 3, 4, 5 are about things that are allowed and disallowed and attempts to evade property that is blocked or conspiracies to evade blocks. This is typical immigration style and sanction style language and doesn't apply except for possibly one section which is  "articles" Sec. 5.  Nothing in this order shall prohibit:  (b)  transactions related to the provision of articles such as food, clothing, and medicine intended to be used to relieve human suffering. "articles" which has been defined in dictionaries as "An individual thing or element of a class; a particular object or item." It says nothing about "thing" being a material, tangible good.  It could be an intangible thing such as an art, or specifically a 'virtual' or 'digitized product' could be an 'article' also.  Thus, adobe, being a 'software' article or it's work-product derived digital files as 'articles', or even "accounts" or "licenses" could be permitted under this section, granted it's used for humanitarian purposes.   Since the US government has yet to evaluate the "humanitarianness" of regular person accountholders or their derivative works, then they cannot be blocked Thus if Adobe is blocking them, they are purposefully and maliciously excluding those Venezuelan accountholders from participating in global goodwill, by precluding their intentions and excluding them from their cloud services and software.  This is squarely an ADOBE's doing and not a US GOVERNMENT doing. So Adobe should be ultimately accountable for deleting those Venezuelans accounts, not the US Gov Conclusion Adobe's assault on Venezuelan customers by Proxy is emblematic of (and one in a growing list of examples of) the Left's outrage against the "others" in the United States that voted for Trump, and against Trump, and against the changing of political power in America.  They are hoping to 'stir things up in terms of lawfare as a kind of smear-by-proxy'...a kind of LAWSMEAR on Trump.   It's another example of projective false-victimhood, which tries to say, "LOOK WHAT MEAN TRUMP MADE US DO!!  HE'S TERRIBLE AND STUPID" We're not buying it, Adobe, and we're putting up with it. Many of us have already moved to Linux, which is superior in every way to Windows platform anyway.  Your software never supported Linux, and doesn't plan to.  We've already looked at alternatives, and taken the pain of using open source offerings instead.  We've found them to be not only capable but superior in all ways but the interface.  Adobe's interface still has everyone beat.  But it's not enough, to put up with your company's infantile political maneuvers which are increasingly obvious as a form of worldview warfare on the global everyperson.  Wer'e not putting up with it, and people will vote you into oblivion by starting to withhold dollars and evaluate alternatives.   Adobe--You've been warned.