alt Hacker NewsThis will have no impact on Adobe's shenanigans. They offer click-to-cancel, but then charge a cancellation fee equal to what you would have paid for the rest of the one-year term. Their clever justification is that you received a significant discount for committing to a year, so you still owe them for the remaining months if you cancel early. I didn't even realize I had signed up for a one-year commitment. I'm not sure where they buried that clause.
I expect more businesses will transition to this strategy to counter NYC's new rule. They won't necessarily lower the price, but you will have to sign up for a one-year term, then they will hit you with a massive cancellation fee if you "click to cancel".
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Btw its likely still possible to change subscription with Adobe to different one and then cancel it free of charge due to new 14-days window. Not sure if it works right now, but worked like charm before.
That falls under deceptive advertising.
> you received a significant discount for committing to a year, so you still owe them for the remaining months if you cancel early. I didn't even realize I had signed up for a one-year commitment
Does this law apply retroactively?
You wouldn't have a claim under the "straightforward cancellation process" part–same way this law doesn't enable one to walk away from a long-term lease for shits and giggles. But you may under the "clearly explain subscription terms to you" bit.
If you actually ask them and push a little they’ll forgo that fee. Disclaimer: Adobe is the worst and can’t wait to see them crumble. If Intuit could also go…
> discount for committing to a year
It's worse than that. They don't even offer a monthly subscription contract - it's purely annual, but they advertise and promote monthly with fine print.
I hate to defend Adobe but it literally says "Annually, paid monthly" right under the price.
They should for sure list the annual price and the monthly price but it's not "burried".
With LLMs in the picture there’s no excuse for signing a contract without reading it because it was too long or hard to understand. Adobe makes its terms pretty clear. You are entering a one year commitment.
Worth keeping an eye on ArtCraft (https://getartcraft.com/apps).
They're building a free, open-source Adobe Creative Suite alternative entirely in Rust. It runs super fast with minimal overhead, works completely offline, and aims for near 1:1 feature parity with Adobe products like Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and After Effects. It also supports command-based actions, making it easy to integrate into AI agents and automated workflows. They have Microsoft Office alternatives too.
Their Photoshop clone, PhotoCraft (https://github.com/storytold/photocraft), has around 47k GitHub stars right now.