from the if-I-had-a-backup-I'd-still-sue dept.
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Premiere Pro bug ate my videos! Bloke sues Adobe after greedy 'clean cache' wipes files
Adobe is being sued after Premiere Pro unexpectedly deleted a snapper's valuable media files.
David Keith Cooper on Wednesday sued Adobe in San Jose, USA, on behalf of himself and anyone who purchased Premiere Pro 11.1.0, and, as a result, had their personal media files nuked by the video-editing suite. The sueball claims a bug in the application caused it to judiciously erase expensive footage for his projects when he hit the "Clean Cache" function.
[...] At some point, he wanted to free up space on that drive, so told the app to instead use the "Videos" directory on an external storage device to store cached materials. That "Videos" directory also happened to contain footage Cooper, a professional photographer and videographer, had been using for his work. We think you know where this is going.
When he later hit a button to clean the suite's cache, rather than delete the "Media Cache" folder in his "Videos" directory, it instead wiped everything that hadn't been accessed for 90 or more days from the whole "Videos" directory, it is claimed.
[...] Adobe declined to comment on the case, citing a policy against discussing pending litigation.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Revek on Thursday November 08 2018, @01:56PM (11 children)
We had a lady who used to keep files in the recycle bin. One day a tech came through and ran the disk cleanup utility and she freaked. She also didn't understand it was her fault for putting important documents in the trash.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Thursday November 08 2018, @02:10PM (1 child)
Me too! Me too!
I knew a girl who kept pictures of her ex-es in the Trash Bin. She would occasionally take them out, view, and put them back with pleasure. Yeah, being the "fix my computer" guy, I tried to empty the trash and only noticed something is wrong when it took some time to count the content...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Thursday November 08 2018, @03:23PM
Depending on which version of Windows they were using, there were some valid user interface issues.
The original Windows 95 Explorer desktop did not have a "my documents" shortcut. Because there was no persistent menu like the Macintosh, there is no immediately discoverable way to create new folders or shortcuts on the root desktop. Coming from Windows 3.1, the expectation was everyone would go through "my computer" to manage their files, which could be a bit overwhelming on a loaded system.
So by default, the only container directly on the desktop that could hold files was the recycle bin. Brilliant.
If I recall correctly, Office 95 added a "my desktop" folder on the hard drive, but did not add a shortcut to the desktop. We always had to manually add a desktop shortcut when installing it. Office 97 got the message and automatically created a desktop shortcut.
But then Windows XP, or at least some configurations of it, got this brilliant idea to "simplify" the desktop by hiding all desktop icons by default.... except for the recycle bin.
So once again the only container directly on the desktop that could hold files was the recycle bin. And now "my computer" was gone.
Of course, normal users will not change default settings. Either out of fear they might break something, fear they might become too "different", or if it not their computer then fear they might get in to trouble. So they simply make use of what they visibly have in front of them, even if it isn't the right way to do things.
I still hear of a somewhat similar problem of people not knowing where their browser "downloads" are going, which sometimes needs a desktop shortcut. But these days Microsoft's user metrics don't tell them squat about things people need to do yet avoid because the UI is too fucked up to start with.
(Score: 2) by rob_on_earth on Thursday November 08 2018, @03:47PM (1 child)
Once upon a time I used clean offices in the evenings. Large offices, lots of bins and lots of hoovering.
One night I got called over by the supervisor; she wanted to know if I had binned a large folder, from one of the offices from the night before, proudly I said I had. It was on top of a bin that it was too big to fit into.
Turned out that was a rather important folder and although I did not get the sack all the cleaners got a briefing about not throwing anything away unless it was IN the bin.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:21PM
#metoo
In my last place of employment my boss had a plastic large map with a ton of markings on it. And it was kept on the bin. I even cautioned against that and what do you know, one day this valuable relic was gone. Boss not happy. Was kind of hard not to say SEE I TOLD YOU SO!!!!1
(Score: 5, Interesting) by EvilSS on Thursday November 08 2018, @04:41PM (2 children)
Of course I've seen fun in IT too. One customer had a domain admin (who was never discovered) move SysVol on one of the DCs into the temp folder. Of course some time later someone came along and needed to free up space so they cleared the temp folder. Queue panic and chaos on 3 continents...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:38PM (1 child)
You had a friend? What was that like?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @10:32PM
A bit like getting upvoted IRL.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday November 08 2018, @07:31PM
Yup. Been there, done that. I shrugged and carried on.
Listed the issue as pebkac.
(Score: 3, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:45PM (1 child)
I set up a transfer directory at work that anyone could use to transfer files around, with the proviso that a) anyone and everyone could see what was in there and b) it could be deleted at any time. I made very, very sure people understood both parts.
One day someone asked for help with their presentation. They had created it and edited it solely in the transfer directory. I went to open the file... and I swear this is the absolute truth, it was in no way deliberate - my muscle memory kicked in and I pressed "shift-delete, enter" instead of just "enter."
Boom. File gone. I tried to recover it, but wasn't able to. I apologised only the requisite amount for my clumsiness, since I still had the originally posted warnings to back me up. He was pretty reasonable and contrite about it, considering I'd just deleted hours of work.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1, Troll) by rondon on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:33AM
I see that he made a mistake in failing to account for your potential fuckup. Which obviously happened. Do you also piss in the punch at parties?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:54PM
I attempted to perform a tool upgrade. First step was to make an image of the hard disk just-in-case, so I deleted the Temp directory to speed up the image creation.
That software upgrade failed. The software team depended on temp files from the previous upgrade. I know we don't write the best software, but I thought the SW group would know they cannot depend on the Temp directory.
And the additional down time was my fault, naturally.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @01:56PM (10 children)
...lack of frequent and reliable backups but you.
it's 2018 and someone does't know this?
(Score: 5, Informative) by pkrasimirov on Thursday November 08 2018, @02:16PM (1 child)
I disagree. The current trend is exactly the opposite: Don't backup, come to the Cloud™ where we keep it for you forever*
* Terms and conditions may apply; mileage may vary; your pictures may be gone
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:41PM
There. FTFY.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @03:02PM (7 children)
This is irrelevant, the thing described here is still a bug, and giving by the hefty cost of this software an inexcuseable one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @03:04PM (6 children)
PS: Raw footage can easily chew through many TB's of space. Backing that stuff up isn't as trivial as backing up a handful of documents.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by EvilSS on Thursday November 08 2018, @04:18PM (4 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:16PM (1 child)
....blame others)
AAAANNND, it should be worth his while to make a separate directory for files being worked on: one for the originals and one for the 'cache'.
Idiot should ALWAYS back up important 'cannot lose no matter what FOREVER' files so that he does not lose them no matter what FOREVER. If there is no backup and the hard drive fails....
This is why i have a separate backup of my 20+ years of Doctor Who: one drive fails, the other is there. Firefly i can afford to lose because 1. the download is smaller and 2. i have the DVD's as well i could rip from.
But if i had to i could re-download.
If they are original files i created myself and 'cannot lose no matter what FOREVER', i have backups (and often backups of backups).
YES, the software should maybe not do that, but the file owner is also responsible.
(Score: 2) by rondon on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:40AM
So it is this poor fellows fault that his software, which he purchased with very good money, deletes his shit in ways that are not supposed to happen and were never described as possible?
Are you fucking ignorant of the concept of gross negligence? Do you understand that there isn't a single copy of Adobe Anything that comes with the warning to back up all of your shit because it could wipe your drives?
Jesus Christ, just because some guy makes the mistake of not backing up his files every fucking thumb sucking basement dweller on the site says that it is his fault that proprietary software doesn't act appropriately and causes him economic harm. Can you all suck on proprietary penis just a bit harder? I'm sure that Adobe is going to come around and reward you for being a good soldier any day now.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday November 09 2018, @07:19PM (1 child)
Sure, he should have had a backup. Just like a homeowner should have insurance. However, that doesn't mean an arsonist is off the hook for burning the house down with or without insurance.
The incompetence of the software in question does rise to the level of malice. It would seem natural enough that when told where to put a cache, that it should create a folder in that volume specifically for cache files and not touch anything else. That too is just common sense. It would be a good idea to call tmp-something or something-tmp to emphasize that files in that folder are subject to disappearing without notice.
As it turns out, the software did create a cache folder, but it would also delete files outside of that folder, which Adobe has admitted is a bug and issued a patch to confine the deletion to within the folder.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Friday November 09 2018, @08:10PM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @05:09PM
A 4 TB drive costs about $100. It may also cost about $100 in computer and operator time to copy important files to that drive, and let's say it costs $100 to store that drive somewhere for its lifetime, and there will inevitably be some costs associated with accessing the backups whenever needed.
So let's make a very rough estimate that the cost of a simple backup solution like this "just copy everything to brand new 4TB disks and then store them somewhere" is about $100/TB, over the lifetime of the data.
Not having backups is like not having fire insurance on your house. It might not be your fault if your house burns down but not having insurance is your fault. We can use home insurance to get a feel for how much non-backed-up data could be worth to its owner: say the data has value for 10 years, insurance on a $250k house might be $1000/yr, so let's say $10000 is a fair value for insuring $250k of assets against total loss over 10 years, or put another way, we might estimate that backups on $250k of data are worth about $10000.
So with that estimate, we can determine that if one spend less than $10000 on the backup solution for that data, then it is money well spent, but if it costs more than that, the money would be better spent on something else. With our $100/TB cost in mind, this guy should definitely have backed it up his $250k stash if it was less than 100TB in size, which it almost certainly was.
The article doesn't say how much storage was needed, but it does say "500 hours" and it was all available to be deleted so it couldn't have been too huge. Let's (VERY conservatively) estimate 20GB/hr so that's about 10TB of data (which will fit on one big hard drive).
So since the guy doesn't have backups, we can use our estimates to put an upper bound on how much the data must have been valued (before he lost it, anyway, when he presumably quite suddenly realized its true value). 10TB * 25 * $100 / TB -- about $25k.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by drussell on Thursday November 08 2018, @03:26PM
Even if the guy didn't realize it for a while, something like PhotoRec would retrieve a huge portion of his (apparently un-backed up, only copy of) important media files.
What if his drive had failed? Would he sue Seagate or Western Digital or whatever?
:facepalm:
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday November 08 2018, @03:39PM (4 children)
In my time doing user support for products our tiny company produced, we came up with a term to resolve many issues. RRU = Remove and replace user.
If I understand the situation correctly, (1) The guy points the software to a directory to hold temporary files, (2) he tells it to clean out the temporary files, (3) it does so. The software worked correctly. At most, perhaps the software should have warned him at step 1 that the directory was not empty.
Also, backups. How does this guy not have backups, if the videos are important.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @04:52PM (1 child)
I am not sure, because of
If I told a program to use the X directory as a cache and nothing else, I would not have anything to say when it zaps the whole dir. BUT, if I see the program creating a Media Cache I MIGHT think the cache files go there. But it is possible that the media cache dir stores only indexes or proxies and other stuff is cached in the upper directory level.
I think the user is in the wrong because probably it's written "select the media cache" instead of "select the dir where you want to put the media cache into". But I kinda understand. I would award him no damages as not making a backup after months and months, and then claiming data was invaluable is irrational.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday November 09 2018, @07:49PM
Since Adobe issued a patch to make sure it only deletes files in the "Media Cache" directory, I'd say it was a bug that it deleted the other files that are now the subject of the suit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Thursday November 08 2018, @05:22PM
Rear
Raped
User
when the fault was actually yours I guess.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday November 09 2018, @07:46PM
There's the fail. It did clean out the temporary files, but it then also removed non-temporary files outside of it's cache directory.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Thursday November 08 2018, @03:50PM (1 child)
My wife used Scrivener. Of course, she started out by using the tutorial, editing changes into it as instructed. Then went on to write her own text -- many kilowords in multiple chapters.
Then came the day she got a Scrivener upgrade.
All her writing disappeared.
It turned out that Scrivener had upgraded the tutorial as well, replacing the old tutorial. And since she started by using the tutorial, she had unwittingly stored her own writing in the tutorial.
Oh yes, we had a backup. But backups are never up-to-date except immediately after you make them. And we were unwilling to merely restore from backup and go on using Scrivener without understanding what had happened. As far as we knew, Scrivener had randomly and arbitrarily destroyed her work and might do it again. We no longer trusted Scrivener.
I spent some time poring over the backed-up files using Linux and deciding that I probably could do enough reverse engineering to reconstruct her actual text, to be further edited with nonScrivener tools.
She contacted the company that produced Scrivener, and they were able to tell her how to rescue her text. Fortunately the old tutorial hadn't really been deleted; it had just been moved to trash and, again fortunately, she hadn't bothered cleaning out the trash. We managed to track down her writing in the trash.
After recovering her up-to-date work from the trash, she's happily using Scrivener again, and her text files are now not in the tutorial. I'll ask her when she last made a backup now that the Premier Pro problem has reminded me of this old story.
Scrivener now requires new users to make a copy of the tutorial, and to edit the copy when they are learning how to use it, specifically so that beginners are unlikely to suffer serious consequences from an upgrade.
I suspect that Premier Pro could be made to provide a warning if a cache directory is provided that already has contents.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday November 09 2018, @06:13AM
Considering how targeted an audience Scrivener appears to serve, I'm surprised they don't offer a turnkey backup solution as a feature or addon with the product. Even if it only backed up text, it seems like it would make sense to squirrel away drafts and/or copies of your writing in multiple locations to be safe.
(Score: 5, Funny) by chewbacon on Thursday November 08 2018, @04:10PM (2 children)
I responded to a support call with a user who said she edited her spreadsheet, shutdown her computer, went home, came back and her changes were gone. I asked her if she saved her work before she shutdown. She got pretty snappy and said: don’t you ever ask me a question like that again, because I’m not stupid and I’ve been using spreadsheets for a long time.
So her call went on my back burner for a couple hours. I went to her office eventually and started working on it. I found said spreadsheet in her documents folder. She then said she copies it to the desktop everyday as she opens it and closes it multiple times. At the end of the day, she deletes the desktop copy... and there it was in the recycle bin! She deleted the fucking thing. I advised her of a solution: make a shortcut on the desktop to your spreadsheet in your documents.
“No, I don’t want to do that. I don’t like shortcuts. In fact, I think they’re stupid.” Now the Forrest Gump quote made sense to me: stupid is as stupid does. She rejected the solution. Asked to escalate the issue, which just sent it to my manager. He closed the ticket: solution provided to user. She sent a few more tickets for the same problem and we continued to close them and advise her.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:20PM
Yup... can't fix stupid.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @10:41AM
You still failed at your support job, because after you learned that she doesn't like and won't use shortcuts, you failed to give her the obvious solution: Instead of deleting the copy on the desktop, move it back to the documents folder.
(Score: 1) by Ingar on Thursday November 08 2018, @05:48PM (3 children)
10.1 Unless stated in the Additional Terms, we are not liable to you or anyone else for any loss of use, data, goodwill, or profits, whatsoever, and any special, incidental, indirect, consequential, or punitive damages whatsoever, regardless of cause (even if we have been advised of the possibility of the loss or damages), including losses and damages (a) resulting from loss of use, data, or profits, whether or not foreseeable; (b) based on any theory of liability, including breach of contract or warranty, negligence or other tortious action; or (c) arising from any other claim arising out of or in connection with your use of or access to the Services or Software. Nothing in the Terms limits or excludes our liability for gross negligence, for our, or our employees’, intentional misconduct, or for death or personal injury.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @10:33AM
Of course, just because they write it in their terms of use doesn't imply that it conforms to applicable law. After all, there's a reason why such terms typically contain the clause that if some terms are found invalid, that doesn't automatically invalidate the rest.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Friday November 09 2018, @07:59PM (1 child)
Terms of use routinely attempt to disclaim liabilities that can't actually be disclaimed.
You can't just put a not responsible bumper sticker on your car and cancel your liability insurance.
(Score: 2) by rondon on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:46AM
Thank you!
I can't believe that people, on this site of all places, don't understand that words written by a lawyer aren't necessarily an enforceable contract. In fact, it is not possible to use a contract to wish away a pretty sizeable number of rights and responsibilities.
So lets say it one more time for the peanut gallery - DON'T EVER TRUST A SHRINKWRAP AGREEMENT
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @11:12PM (1 child)
Yes yes the user is a complete moron for not backing their stuff up. With that out of the way, its absolutely unacceptable for any program to delete files which it doesn't own, hasn't created, and wasn't explicitly directed to remove. Clearing a cache directory should ONLY clear out the files that particular program has created. Literally less than a day ago I implemented a caching feature in one of my own apps and had to also implement a 'clear cache' button. It wasn't even something I had to think about, right off the bat I made sure it only cleared on the cache files it created, nothing else.
Sloppy coding from Adobe and sloppy data management from the end user is the best explanation here. I doubt he will get any compensation judging from the Terms of Service quoted by Ingar.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @03:16AM
Unless the judge decides that the act was negligence on Adobe's part, which can't be excluded or limited by general contractual terms - and that is a contract, not a boilerplate non-negotiable SLA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @03:07PM
I once imaged a users computer. She claimed she always backed up to her D drive. Refused to let me take the time to back up her data. Turns out someone had shared a directory from the C drive and mounted it as her D drive. I imaged her computer and hilarity ensued. Well not really hilarity so much as recriminations and finger pointing. Luckily several other office drones had witnessed the conversation and my multiple attempts to back up her system. CYA is almost as important as a good backup!