Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 19 submissions in the queue.

Adobe Goes After 27-Year Old 'Pirated' Copy of Acrobat Reader 1.0 for MS-DOS

posted by martyb on Wednesday March 17 2021, @06:44AM   Printer-friendly
from the still-crazy-world dept.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Adobe Goes After 27-Year Old 'Pirated' Copy of Acrobat Reader 1.0 for MS-DOS * TorrentFreak:

Today, there are many popular PDF readers available but Adobe’s original ‘Acrobat Reader’ is still the go-to software for many. Needless to say, Adobe doesn’t want third-parties to pirate its software, so the company regularly sends out DMCA notices to remove infringing copies.

[...] While this is totally understandable when it comes to newer releases, F-Secure researcher Mikko Hyppönen found out that Adobe’s takedown efforts go far beyond that.

In a recent tweet, Hyppönen mentioned that the software company removed one of his tweets that linked to an old copy of Acrobat Reader for MS-DOS. This software, hosted on WinWorld, came out more than 27-years ago, shortly after the PDF was invented.

The security researcher posted the tweet five years ago and at the time there were no issues. The message was copied a few weeks ago by his own Twitter bot, which reposts all his original tweets five years later.

“They sent a DMCA notice to my bot (@mikko__2016) when it posted that tweet on the tweet’s 5th anniversary. The original tweet is fine,” Hyppönen notes.

While the original tweet is still up, the reposted message was swiftly removed by Twitter. Not just that, the bot’s account was locked as well, which is standard practice nowadays.

Looking more closely at the takedown notice, we see that it was sent by the “brand protection analyst” at Incopro, which is one of Adobe’s anti-piracy partners. It doesn’t provide any further details on the reasons for taking it down, other than an alleged copyright infringement.

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Adobe Goes After 27-Year Old 'Pirated' Copy of Acrobat Reader 1.0 for MS-DOS | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 31 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by shortscreen on Wednesday March 17 2021, @04:46PM (1 child)

    by shortscreen (2252) on Wednesday March 17 2021, @04:46PM (#1125404) Journal

    Did Acrobat Reader 1.0 require a paid license? I have an install of version 4.0 hanging around, which I'm sure was a free download at the time. Suprisingly it can still open some recently created PDFs.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   3  

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 17 2021, @08:56PM

    by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Wednesday March 17 2021, @08:56PM (#1125522) Homepage
    You remember correctly. That was their method of expanding adoption. In the early days it would be on every cover CD. I can't remember whether it was free to distribute, but it was certainly free to use. And given that passing it on would advance the distribution they were themselves attempting, I can't imagine they put that blockage in the way of their own benefit. However, Adobe's Adobe, don't expect sense.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves