User:Louis/ArtCraft Adobe clones and Section 1201 reform

ArtCraft has debuted free, open-source clones of seven Adobe programs, including Photoshop & Premiere, that developer Brandon Thomas said he created with an artificial intelligence (AI) model, the technology site Ars Technica reported on October 7, 2026. The apps are unfinished, & the page of PhotoCraft, the Photoshop clone, on the code-sharing site GitHub calls it "not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work".

Consumer advocate Louis Rossmann, president of the FULU Foundation, which says it works "to restore ownership over our digital devices", argues that if AI makes cloning paid software cheap, software companies will ask Congress for new laws against such clones. If Congress rewrites copyright law to deal with such clones, he argues, it should also repeal or rewrite Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the law that makes it illegal to get around a digital lock on a copyrighted work.

Seven free clones of Adobe apps

Ars reported that ArtCraft's seven open-source apps recreate the user interface & tools of Adobe's Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign & Acrobat Pro. Open source here means, in the words of ArtCraft's apps page, "Every line is on GitHub under permissive licenses. Read it, fork it, build on it." Each app's GitHub page describes it as "an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of" an Adobe program: PhotoCraft of Photoshop, VectorCraft of Illustrator, FilmCraft of Premiere Pro, LightCraft of Lightroom, EffectCraft of After Effects, DesignCraft of InDesign & PdfCraft of Acrobat.

Ars reported that Thomas, announcing the apps on Reddit, said he used Anthropic's AI model Claude Opus 5.5 to create "clean-room replacements" for Adobe's closed source software. Ars called the method "AI-powered reverse engineering" & defined reverse engineering as "replicating the functionality of a piece of software without directly copying the code itself". PhotoCraft's README, the description file on its GitHub page, says the app was "implemented from public specs and observed behaviour only. No proprietary code, shaders or assets." The README says PhotoCraft's support for Photoshop's PSD file format "is a standalone crate written from Adobe's public specification". PhotoCraft's parity document, which measures the app against Photoshop, lists what its authors "Inspected without launching it" in an installed copy of Photoshop 2026, including "strings in the main binary". PdfCraft's rules file for contributors says: "Never read, disassemble or copy anything inside the Acrobat bundle."

PhotoCraft's README says the app "is in early alpha" & names its biggest gaps as "AI/generative features, 15 missing tools, depth in typography and pro workflows, and plug-in compatibility". Thomas wrote on Reddit, as quoted by Ars, "We're going to reach 100% [feature] parity within a month". The technology news site Gizmodo reported that he said on the Hacker News forum that the apps are "not anywhere close to ready". Ars reported that in an earlier comment Thomas "gloated" that "Software is over" & claimed to have "one-shotted Photoshop. The whole thing."

The science & technology news site Futurism ran its story under a headline beginning "Adobe in Trouble After Someone Reverse Engineered Adobe Creative Suite", though the article said "a professional user is probably stuck with Adobe for the time being". HotHardware, a technology news site, reported on October 8, 2026 that "A lone developer" had released the apps, & Futurism credited them to "a four-person team of vibecoders". The technology publication Computing reported on October 8, 2026 that Adobe "has yet to make a statement on the subject".

Adobe's early termination fee and terms of use

Adobe's "Annual plan, paid monthly" is a yearly subscription billed each month, & Adobe says it "comes with a significant discount", so "a cancellation fee applies if you cancel before the year ends." For subscribers in the US, Adobe's help page says:

After 14 days, a cancellation fee (early termination fee) of 50% of the remaining balance of the contract applies. For example, if you cancel in the ninth month, you pay 50% of the fee for the three remaining months.

Thomas wrote on Hacker News that he was inspired to create his own open source Adobe alternatives after being "bit by the dark pattern ‘cancellation fee’ one too many times", Ars reported.

The Justice Department sued Adobe & two of its executives in United States v. Adobe, Inc. on June 17, 2024, alleging that they "imposed a hidden 'Early Termination Fee' on millions of online subscribers" & that Adobe "forced subscribers to navigate a complex and challenging cancellation process". Rossmann covered the suit in a June 18, 2024 video titled "Adobe gets sued by FTC for roofying customers with hidden fees; GOOD! 😂", arguing that Adobe appeared to have tried to trick customers into paying an early termination fee it had hidden from them. On April 10, 2026, Judge Noël Wise signed an order the two sides had agreed to, which entered a $75,000,000 civil penalty judgment against Adobe, & Adobe agreed to offer consumers $75,000,000 in free services. The parties agreed that these free services "are not compensation for actual pecuniary loss, if any". The Justice Department had announced the agreement on March 13, 2026, saying it had filed a "proposed stipulated order" requiring Adobe "to pay $75 million in civil penalties and offer customers $75 million in free services". Gizmodo, reporting on ArtCraft in October 2026, wrote that Adobe "agreed to a $150 million settlement". Adobe said in a statement that "we disagree with the government’s claims and deny any wrongdoing". In the order, Adobe & the two executives "neither admit nor deny any of the allegations in the Complaint", apart from what their answer & the order state. The order requires Adobe to disclose "how the early cancellation fee is calculated (for applicable products)", & says a customer who signed up through an online flow "must generally be able to cancel" the same way.

Section 2.2 of Adobe's General Terms of Use published on August 1, 2022 said that Adobe's "automated systems may analyze your Content" with "techniques such as machine learning in order to improve our Services and Software". The technology news site The Stack reported on June 5, 2024 that users had spotted changes to Adobe's terms, last updated in February 2024, that highlighted the company's right to "access your content through both automated and manual methods", & that Adobe appeared to be pushing those terms to users through its applications. That version, published on February 17, 2024, said:

We may access, view, or listen to your Content (defined in section 4.1 (Content) below) through both automated and manual methods, but only in limited ways, and only as permitted by law.

Section 4.1 of that version defined "Content" as:

any text, information, communication, or material, such as audio files, video files, electronic documents, or images, that you upload, import into, embed for use by, or create using the Services and Software.

The Stack quoted one customer, Duncan Jones, who wrote to Adobe's Photoshop account on June 5, 2024:

Hey @Photoshop what the hell was that new agreement you forced us to sign this morning that locked our ap until we agree to it? We are working on a bloody movie here, and NO, you don’t suddenly have the right to any of the work we are doing on it because we pay you to use…

In a June 6, 2024 video, Rossmann argued that software which must connect to Adobe's cloud leaves users subject to terms Adobe can change at any time. In the same video, he said that a customer with a half-finished project could not open it without first agreeing to the new terms. The Stack updated its report on June 6, 2024 with a statement in which Adobe said: "This policy has been in place for many years." Adobe told The Stack that it "does not access, view or listen to content that is stored locally" on any user's device. The same day, Adobe wrote on its blog that it had "pushed a routine re-acceptance of those terms" to Creative Cloud & Document Cloud customers, & that it "does not train Firefly Gen AI models on customer content". Adobe said in a second post, on June 10, 2024, that it had "never trained generative AI on customer content" & planned "to roll out updated changes by June 18, 2024". In a June 11, 2024 video titled "Louis rips Adobe to shreds over their garbage response, because they deserve it", Rossmann called Adobe's post manipulative crisis management, & argued that its promise about generative AI did not answer customers' objection, because the terms they had to accept let Adobe use machine learning, of which generative AI is one kind. Adobe's General Terms of Use that took effect on June 18, 2024, after a terms of use update, say:

We will not use your Local or Cloud Content to train generative AI models except for Content you choose to submit to the Adobe Stock marketplace, and this use is governed by the separate Adobe Stock Contributor Agreement.

Section 4.2 of the August 1, 2022 terms, whose license wording the February 17, 2024 version kept word for word, gave Adobe a license "Solely for the purposes of operating or improving the Services and Software":

you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free sublicensable, license, to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and translate the Content.

Section 4.3(A) of the June 18, 2024 version limited the main license to operating the services for the customer & tied it to the customer's ownership of the content:

Solely for the purpose of operating the Services and Software on your behalf, and subject to section 4.2 (Ownership) above which states that in all cases you own your Content, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to do the following with your Cloud Content...

Section 4.3(B) set out a separate license for what the terms called "Content Analytics": Adobe's "internal analysis of how you use our Services and Software" & of "the characteristics of your Content (such as file type and structural attributes)". A separate clause, section 4.3(C), said: "You have the right to opt out of us performing Content Analytics using your Content".

US copyright law on copying software

Ars wrote that reverse engineering "has generally been found legally acceptable", & that the ArtCraft apps "could still face legal trouble" if their "trade dress" too closely mimics "Adobe's familiar appearance and interface". Under section 102(b) of the federal copyright statute, copyright protection does not extend to "any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation" in a work.

In Lotus Development Corp. v. Borland International, Inc., decided on March 9, 1995, the First Circuit held that the menu command hierarchy of the spreadsheet program Lotus 1-2-3, which Borland had copied, is "an uncopyrightable 'method of operation'", & an equally divided Supreme Court affirmed in 1996. Oracle America, Inc. owns a copyright in Java SE, a computer program that uses the Java programming language, & sued Google for copyright infringement after Google "copied roughly 11,500 lines of code from the Java SE program". Those lines "are part of a tool called an Application Programming Interface, or API", through which "a programmer can draw upon a vast library of prewritten code" to carry out complex tasks. In Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., decided on April 5, 2021 in an opinion by Justice Breyer joined by five other justices, with Justice Thomas dissenting, joined by Justice Alito, & Justice Barrett taking no part, the Supreme Court wrote:

we assume, for argument’s sake, that the material was copyrightable. But we hold that the copying here at issue nonetheless constituted a fair use.

The Court held that Google, which "reimplemented a user interface" by copying only the lines of code that programmers familiar with Java needed to put their skills to work in "a new and transformative program", made a fair use of the Sun Java application programming interface "as a matter of law". Fair use is a defense under the Copyright Act. Earlier in the case, the Federal Circuit had held that "both the API’s declaring code and its organizational structure could be copyrighted". The Supreme Court declined to decide that question, writing that "we should not answer more than is necessary to resolve the parties’ dispute".

In Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc. (1992), Accolade turned the machine-readable code in Sega's game cartridges into human-readable code, a process called "disassembly", to make its games compatible with Sega's Genesis console. The Ninth Circuit held disassembly a fair use "as a matter of law" where it is "the only way to gain access to the ideas and functional elements" in a program & "where there is a legitimate reason for seeking such access". In Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corporation (2000), the Ninth Circuit held that Connectix's reverse engineering of the PlayStation's BIOS, the program that operates the console, "is protected as a fair use". Connectix's Virtual Game Station was meant "to emulate on a regular computer the functioning of the Sony PlayStation console", & the court noted that it "does not contain any of Sony's copyrighted material". The district court had enjoined Connectix from selling the program, & the Ninth Circuit reversed "with instructions to dissolve the injunction".

The chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) made its Am386 processor by reverse engineering Intel's 80386, & an arbitrator found that AMD did not produce the chip until March 1991. In a dispute over a 1982 technology exchange agreement between the two companies, the arbitrator awarded AMD a "royalty-free license to any Intel intellectual property embodied in the Am386", & on December 30, 1994 the California Supreme Court upheld the award. The Computer History Museum writes that for its Compaq Portable, the computer maker Compaq "licensed MS-DOS from Microsoft and legally reverse-engineered IBM’s BIOS software", the "basic input-output system" of the IBM PC, & "sold more than $150M worth of these computers in their first year".

In Bowers v. Baystate Technologies, Inc. (2003), the Federal Circuit held that the First Circuit would find parties "free to contractually forego the limited ability to reverse engineer a software product". In Davidson & Associates v. Jung (2005), the Eighth Circuit held that the appellants had "contractually accepted restrictions on their ability to reverse engineer" by agreeing to Blizzard Entertainment's end user license agreement & its "Battle.net Terms of Use". Three of the appellants were lead developers of the bnetd project, whose program "emulates the Battle.net service", Blizzard's online gaming service, & "permits users to play online without use of Battle.net".

Adobe's General Terms of Use, which call themselves "a legal agreement between you and Adobe", forbid users to reverse engineer Adobe's services or software, which clause (B) of section 17 says includes "monitoring or tracking the inputs and outputs flowing through a system or an application" in order to recreate it. Adobe's summary of section 17, which the terms say is not legally binding, says Adobe does not "allow you to recreate or attempt to recreate our products". Where local law gives a user the right to decompile the software to make it work with other software, the terms say the user "must first request such information from us". Adobe may then, in its discretion, either provide the information or "impose reasonable conditions, including a reasonable fee, on your decompilation of the Services or Software". Clause (C) of section 17 in the August 1, 2022 version barred customers from using Adobe's software or its output to train an AI system that "mimics or performs any function substantially similar to any function" in Adobe's software or services. The February 17, 2024 version dropped that condition & barred using them to "create, train, test, or otherwise improve any machine learning algorithms or artificial intelligence system", wording the June 18, 2024 & current versions keep.

Software industry lobbying

The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2025 was introduced on May 1, 2025 by Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) & Representative Kevin Kiley (R-CA-3). The bill's findings say that under the act, "All judicial exceptions to patent eligibility are eliminated". The latest action Congress.gov lists for each version of the bill is its May 1, 2025 referral to the Judiciary Committee of its chamber. In Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, decided on June 19, 2014, a unanimous Supreme Court wrote:

the mere recitation of a generic computer cannot transform a patent-ineligible abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention.

The PREVAIL Act, introduced on May 1, 2025 by Senator Coons (D-DE) & Representative Moran (R-TX-1), would change the patent office's "proceedings to review and potentially cancel issued patents". The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property held a hearing on the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act on October 8, 2025, where the witness David J. Kappos, testifying "solely on my own behalf", called the bill "measured and overdue".

The federal lobbying reports of the Business Software Alliance (BSA) for the first two quarters of 2026 list "S. 1553 - Promoting and Respecting Economically Vital American Innovation Leadership (PREVAIL) Act" under the issue area "Copyright/Patent/Trademark". The reports of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) for the same quarters list the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2025 & S. 1553, among others.

Each report gives one total for the organization's lobbying expenses in the quarter, across all the issues it lists. BSA reported $470,000 for the first quarter of 2026 & $320,000 for the second, & SIIA reported $1,369,519 & $1,396,909. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), a video game industry group, reported $1,520,000 & $1,390,000 for the same quarters, & under "Copyright/Patent/Trademark" its reports list only the NO FAKES Act & the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act (H.R. 791). None of the six reports mentions Section 1201, the DMCA, circumvention, reverse engineering or user interfaces.

In comments dated October 30, 2023 for the Copyright Office's inquiry on AI & copyright, BSA | The Software Alliance wrote that "existing copyright law should prove adequate to address questions of infringement." On training AI models, the comments said:

Some of that data may be part of a copyrighted work, but the use normally has nothing to do with the expressive content of a work. A book may be used to learn language skills, which are then used for improved database management practices. These uses fall squarely in fair use under copyright law.

ESA wrote the same day that "New legislation on copyright liability is not needed at this time". In its comment in the same inquiry, SIIA wrote that while its members "may not all agree on how a particular fact pattern ought to be resolved", they "do agree that legislation at this time is premature". On January 29, 2025, the Copyright Office published a report on the copyrightability of AI-generated material, which says that "copyright protection in the United States requires human authorship". The report's conclusions say:

Copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material, or material where there is insufficient human control over the expressive elements.

Repealing or rewriting Section 1201

Section 1201 bars anyone from circumventing "a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title". A second rule bars making, importing, offering or otherwise trafficking in any tool that "is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing" such a lock.

The DMCA was signed into law on October 28, 1998, & its long title says it implements the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty of the World Intellectual Property Organization. Article 11 of the treaty, headed "Obligations concerning Technological Measures", says:

Contracting Parties shall provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that are used by authors in connection with the exercise of their rights under this Treaty or the Berne Convention and that restrict acts, in respect of their works, which are not authorized by the authors concerned or permitted by law.

In a June 2026 video, Rossmann argued that Bruce Lehman, a Clinton administration official he called the primary architect of the DMCA, used his role as a U.S. delegate in Geneva in 1996 to get the anti-circumvention rules written into the treaty, & then told Congress it had to pass them to meet the treaty's obligations. The Copyright Office's 2017 report on Section 1201 says that the WIPO Internet Treaties "do not contain express language regarding trafficking" in circumvention tools, but that "Congress concluded that the adoption of such prohibitions was required for U.S. compliance". The report adds that several free trade agreements to which the United States is a party require that a violation of such a protection "constitute a separate cause of action that is independent of any infringement", meaning a claim that stands even when nobody infringes a copyright.

WIPO's Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights met in Geneva from December 1 to 5, 2025. According to the chair's summary, the committee asked WIPO's Secretariat to prepare "a study on policy or regulatory approaches to the relationship between AI training and copyright", & a proposal for a study on business models created through technological protection measures (TPMs) "was presented to the Committee and will be further discussed at the next session". At its May 18 to 22, 2026 session, the committee considered the TPM proposal again, which "will be discussed further at the next session". Of the AI study, the chair's summary says: "The Scoping Study will be presented and discussed at the next session." That session is scheduled for November 30 to December 4, 2026.

To the question "Did Adobe instigate the U.S. government's investigation of ElcomSoft?", Adobe's 2001 question-and-answer page answered "Yes", saying Adobe "alerted the U.S. government of ElcomSoft's possible illegal distribution of its 'Advanced eBook Processor.'" Adobe called ElcomSoft "a Russian software maker" that "developed a tool that circumvents the copyright protections in Adobe's Acrobat eBook Reader". Dmitry Sklyarov, an ElcomSoft "computer programmer and cryptanalyst", gave a presentation at the DEF CON Nine conference in Las Vegas on July 15, 2001, according to admissions he later made in an agreement with the government. The FBI arrested him at the conference on July 16, 2001. The next day, the U.S. Attorney's Office said Sklyarov had appeared in federal court in Las Vegas on a complaint charging "a single count of trafficking in a product designed to circumvent copyright protection measures", & that the maximum penalty for each count was "five years imprisonment and a fine of $500,000". On July 23, 2001, Adobe said it was "withdrawing its support for the criminal complaint against Dmitry Sklyarov". In the same release, Colleen Pouliot, Adobe's "Senior Vice President and General Counsel", said:

ElcomSoft's Advanced eBook Processor software is no longer available in the United States, and from that perspective the DMCA worked.

On August 28, 2001, a federal grand jury in San Jose indicted ElcomSoft & Sklyarov on five counts, in what the U.S. Attorney's Office called "the first indictment under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act". A second 2001 Adobe question-and-answer page, answering "Should the commercial sale of a computer program like ElcomSoft's be illegal?", compared such programs to locksmith tools & "slim jims" used to open locked car doors, & said that through the DMCA, "Congress has merely banned the digital analogs of these kinds of burglary tools". On May 8, 2002, Ronald M. Whyte, the federal judge hearing the case, wrote that the law still permits "circumventing use restrictions for the purpose of engaging in a fair use", meaning locks that limit how a work is used rather than locks that control access to it, but that "it is unlawful to traffic in tools that allow fair use circumvention", which he called "part of the sacrifice Congress was willing to make". A federal jury in San Jose found ElcomSoft not guilty on all counts on December 17, 2002, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital-rights nonprofit.

In The Chamberlain Group, Inc. v. Skylink Technologies, Inc. (2004), the Federal Circuit held that Section 1201 prohibits "only forms of access that bear a reasonable relationship" to the protections copyright law gives owners, but in MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. (2010) the Ninth Circuit declined to adopt that "infringement nexus requirement", so in the Ninth Circuit, getting around a lock can violate Section 1201 even when no copyright is infringed.

Subsection (f), headed "Reverse Engineering", provides:

...a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and that have not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent any such acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement under this title.

The Copyright Office's 2017 report says the main question is how far subsection (f) allows getting around a lock to make programs work together generally, & that "The few cases in which courts have addressed section 1201(f) have not resolved this ambiguity." Based on the statutory text, the legislative history & the case law, the Office concluded that "the stronger interpretation" is that subsection (f) "does permit circumvention to enable interoperability in certain circumstances, and subject to various statutory safeguards". Every three years, the Librarian of Congress decides whether users of a class of copyrighted works "are, or are likely to be" adversely affected by the ban in their ability to make noninfringing uses, & exempts those users for "the ensuing 3-year period". In the 2024 rulemaking, the Software Preservation Network & the Library Copyright Alliance asked to remove the requirement that preserved video games not be distributed or made available "outside of the physical premises of the eligible library, archives, or museum". ESA wrote that "The Register should reject the proposed changes constituting Class 6(b)", & that:

Enabling widespread remote access to preserved games with minimal supervision would present a serious risk to an important market.

The Register of Copyrights did not recommend removing the premises limitation. On June 9, 2026, the Copyright Office published a notice in the Federal Register opening the tenth of these proceedings, to determine whether to recommend "temporary exemptions to the DMCA's prohibition against circumvention". Petitions for new exemptions were due on August 24, 2026. The FULU Foundation petitioned for new exemptions. The first would permit circumvention on "programs that control the functioning of lawfully-acquired consumer devices" when the manufacturer "has discontinued service or software support essential to its use" or "has ceased business". The second would let an owner remove advertising the manufacturer "pushed onto the user interface of a consumer device after the device was originally sold". The third asks for "the removal of Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) software from smart televisions". Representative Spartz's Farm Freedom to Repair Act (H.R.7850), introduced on March 5, 2026, would add an exception to Section 1201 for "the diagnosis, maintenance, or repair of digital electronic agricultural equipment".

Rossmann announced the foundation in a June 2025 video titled "We've started a foundation to bring back ownership", arguing that laws making it illegal to break the digital locks inside things people bought are anti-ownership. Reforming the DMCA, & Section 1201 above all, is one of FULU's goals, Rossmann said in an August 27, 2025 video titled "We've started an organization to reform the DMCA - here's why", in which he argued that fixing something a person owns, or showing other people how to fix what they own, should never carry legal ambiguity. In the June 2026 video about Lehman, he argued that breaking a digital lock on something a person owns should not bring a blanket five-year prison sentence. FULU's Kevin O'Reilly wrote in a May 13, 2026 post that companies should not be able to "use Sec. 1201 as a cudgel to keep device owners in line".

Brandon Thomas wrote that developers can now build "1:1 functional equivalents" of paid software in a clean room, and that "Nothing is stopping you", Ars reported. Rossmann argues that Section 1201 does not stand in the way of a clean-room clone that gets around no lock. PdfCraft's README says that for documents restricted by their author, the app "honours their permissions. Enter the owner password and the restrictions lift." A clone that has to work with locked software to be useful would need to fit the conditions of subsection (f). The farm-equipment bill would not help such a clone, because its exception covers only "digital electronic agricultural equipment".

See also

• Adobe Creative Suite activation
• Adobe Digital Editions' ebook DRM
• Reverse engineering vs illegal hacking
• Ubisoft DMCA takedown of Slopsmith
• User:Louis/The History of Section 1201 of the DMCA