The deal is, this is a REPLACEMENT CS2 for people who ORIGINALLY PAID FOR CS or CS2. The replacement is needed because the original no longer installs properly. That's all. If anyone else uses it, it's no better than any pirate software off the web.
So when you say it's gotten cheaper... Sorry, but no. It hasn't. Because Adobe has taken away our choices.
And when you bring up the "but you get all the updates automatically now" and all that kind of crap... Well... really... The Creative Suite hasn't really seen any MAJOR update since they went to the Cloud. In the time that people still would buy their perpetual license, Adobe had the "pressure" to come up with something in the new version that made it worthwhile to upgrade. That pressure is gone now, and they've gotten lazy.
I agree with God I hate Adon'tbe that it's turned into a money thing.
It looks like the support is gone. I actually purchased CS2 back when it was current, and when I tried to install it to a new computer, I contacted Adobe support, and they directed me to an Adobe website, and it had CS2 with product keys on the page. I recently looked for the page, to move the CS2 install, and it seems that they have taken the page down. It was legit. Adobe stopped supporting CS2, and thus, offered it free to those that asked for it, but it was hard to find and navigate to. Basically, Adobe pointed people there, for only those that asked.
Not just because of the false advertising that Adobe released CS2 with a free license. It's not just CS2. There are free full version installers for CS6, CC 2017 and CC 2018 as well but all will fail at one point or another, the CCs will still require a cloud subscription and might even contain viruses or other malware.
This is also the case with Microsoft Office or it's individual software. This has become more common over the decade and is intentional to discourage stealing.
That's right, if a product is only legally available by free trial or purchase, obtaining it via freeware is stealing and the distributors can end up doing jail time. Google 'kickass torrents'.
For users, as far as I know, it's more a matter of conscious.
You will have to accept licensing agreement that CS2 is not supported anymore but once you do that you will be presented with number of CS2 products with LICENSE NUMBERS next to it, including CS2 Suite.
You see, there is this thing called common sense, and it tells us that companies that do not want their products to be used for free, would not provide serial number before you pay for the product...
What you do in private is your own business, but don't walk in on a Adobe sponsored public forum and say what you believe trumps their legal agreements and copyrights. If you own a YouTube channel and upload what you just said with the CS2 links, you'll be back here screaming about getting a "copyright strike."
It is important to protect people from the consequences of bad advice. In many countries they may be audited and if they are found to have software with no rights they can prove, they face major penalties.
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