You used to buy software on a disk and it would always run. But software companies are convcerting to an annual license model, where there's no disk, and like content streaming, you get to use the software only so long as you keep paying for it. I've bought movies this way, but to this day I can't even watch the movies I've paid Microsoft for (which to me means that they've simply stolen several hundred dollars from me). No appeals, no refunds. That's just entertainment. When you have a similar dispute over software worth thousands of dollars, and on which your career depends, you can find yourself in a difficult position if the purchase goes south.
That's what's happened to students at Academy of Art University in San Francisco. They were told that their tuition would purchase Adobe Creative Suite licenses. "We were told," they write, "that these licenses would never expire and all forms of professional and student work were permitted." But Adobe doesn't work that way any more, and so has started cancelling the students' licenses. The students (quite rightly, in my view) are crying foul. But they have no rights, and no appeal. They're upset, and I don't blame them. More here, and some press coverage here.
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