At the beginning of the month we shared here on the blog the news about the announcement by Adobe Systems Incorporated (Adobe) where for political reasons from the USA was prevented from continuing to offer its services and products to all those companies and people who will settle in Venezuelan territory.
Besides that he was forced to have to close all the accounts, in order to comply with the US executive decree, from Executive Order 13884, whose practical effect is to prohibit almost all transactions and services between US companies, entities and individuals in Venezuela.
This is basically because of the sanctions imposed by Washington that freeze the possessions of the Venezuelan government in the United States and they end their trade with other countries, with the aim of pressuring President Maduro to withdraw.
Before this Adobe sent emails to all its users in Venezuelan territory where basically they were informed of the termination of the use of their services and that their accounts would be closed and eliminated, also without the possibility of making any reimbursement.
This ad caused great anger on the part of its users since according to them without more nor less, something that they had acquired was simply taken away from them. And that it was not possible that they could not receive reimbursement for their purchases with the company.
Faced with these criticisms and a large number of messages on Adobe's Twitter account, the company simply responded:
“We cannot make a refund. Decree 13884 orders the cessation of all activities, including sales, support, reimbursement and credit, "said Adobe.
After this message, a few days later, Adobe again issued another statement, where always if you make the reimbursement of the products that were purchased only on your site to all those users in Venezuelan territory.
In the statement Adobe also explained that the reimbursement would only be made no later than the end of the month.
And now, days after that. Adobe again issued another statement on the matter and precisely the day in which supposedly all the accounts of the Venezuelan users would be canceled and eliminated.
In this statement he shares that then after various conversations with the US government, Adobe Inc. had managed to obtain a license by the US government to continue supplying all its products and services in Venezuela.
With this, the US has given Adobe permission to continue offering its Creative Cloud services, including Photoshop and Illustrator, to Venezuelan clients, according to a new announcement posted on Adobe's website.
Finally also Adobe I inform that all those paying subscribers whose account was canceled will receive 90 days of free access to all the products and services they had before by way of apology.
He also said that it is important that anyone who has lost access to paid services should regain their access within a week, since the activation of the accounts will be taking place gradually.
“We share the fact that users can continue to access the Creative Cloud and Document Cloud portfolio and content, as they did before. If you lose access to premium services, they will be restored within a week, "said Chris Hall, vice president and general manager of Adobe.
These talks by Adobe with the United States Government they weren't just out of kindness, since according to Reuters in your article:
Venezuelans said they were resorting to piracy after Adobe said it planned to stop access to its products to comply with the sanctions.
In addition to the fact that the sanctions imposed did not greatly affect the senior officials of Venezuela (since the US sanctions have that purpose), but they would end up affecting the citizens, in addition to the fact that the cessation of an entire country does not it's good for Adobe's economy.
You have to take into account something.
Executive Order 13884 not only affected Adobe, but also companies such as Oracle, Red Hat or IBM that commercialize computing solutions based on Linux and other open source projects.
Of course, in this case, Venezuelan users had alternatives such as CentOS
It is correct, thanks for the observation. Greetings :)
Abusive maneuvers by the US government that have a big problem are more harmful measures for the company itself, in this case the US, than for the Venezuelans themselves. Had it continued with this blockade, Venezuela could have become a benchmark in the use of free, open source and free applications. Proving to many other nations that the same can be done at 0 cost. And this could have had a ripple effect. And of course the US has rectified looking after its own interests. The scare that Huawei gave him was enough.