Anyone know how to get Adobe to pay attention? Or am I compelled to be a pirate?

Question

I bought PageMaker many many years ago (about 1998 I think), and at the time it was a substantial investment.
I've upgraded regularly since, and now have InDesign CS3 purchased in June 2007 (Adobe Store Australia Recept No. AD000385242U dated 27/6/07).  Okay, it's not the most current version. I might consider upgrading again if I could be confident I could use an upgrade.  What I have is useless thanks to Adobe's unconscionable behaviour and putting their IP rights ahead of their customer's right to use what they paid for.
I bought a new computer recently. I can't install InDesign because it's an upgrade, and to install an upgrade, I first have to install and register the original product.  Since the original product was an early version of PageMaker, that means installing very old software (not compatible with my current op system!) and then installing and sequentially registering every upgrade to the current one - IF I had every disk set (the first purchase was on 3.5 floppies, which my machine won't even accept), CD, and serial no. 
I have tried over and over to contact Adobe. No response. 
I am taking this to Fair Trading, but pending some satisfaction, the only answer I can think of is pirating!  It may not be legal, but it's perfectly ethical and morally right.  Adobe, on the other hand, is not playing fair. For the first time in over 20 years of software use, my sympathy lies with the pirates!

Answer 1

Not sure this is going to get through as the forum seems to be down for maintenance...
At this point I'm sort of lost as to what you have and don't have.
I THINK I remember that you have a set of disks for InDesign CS3 (not the suite), and that it was an upgrade from Pagemaker, for which you have neither disks nor a record of the serial number. Is that right? Do you have the serial number for your CS3?
The CS3 installers were the worst in Adobe history and will balk at the slightest provocation, which doesn't help here, but if you are getting as far as being asked for a serial number or proof of eligibility that's a good sign that at least the disk is being read. I seem to recall that a lot of users had trouble with installing from the DVD drives that started shipping with new computers at that time, but that could also have been CS2. My brain is turning to mush on some of the older details.
Anyway, I'm not surprised that you would have trouble installing CS3 if you don't have the media or the serial number for the qualifying product for the upgrade. IF it's a disk-reading problem, copying the CD to the desktop (or some more convenient location on your hard drive) often works. It's also important on Windows 7 64-bit (if that's what you have) that you install in the Program Files (x86) folder, not the plain Program Files folder, but I think that will probably happen automatically.
What I was saying in my last post was that if you actually do have the disk or serial number from the CS3 version, you most likely will be successful at installing CS5, even though you can't get CS3 on the machine (wish I was nearby to try to help you in front of the machine with that), if that would be acceptable. Personally, I wouldn't go back to Quark for anything at this point (and it isn't clear that there is going to be a Quark to go back to for very long), so I'm not sure what "other" options you have in mind for competing titles. The only word of caution I would give in the upgrade to CS5.5 scenario is once you convert your files to the new version, there's very little chance to go backward, especially for you. ID files are not directly backward compatible -- only CS5.5 is able to open CS5.5 files, so opening in any other version requires export to the new .idml format, which can be read by CS4, CS5 and CS5.5, but not CS3 or earlier, so you need CS4 to export a .inx file that can be read in CS3, and by the time you've gone through that many conversions the file will probably be a mess. I would also suggest, if upgrading, that any older files you open in CS5.5 should be immediately exported to .idml, then that opened and saved as a new file (don't overwrite the old version) for editing. There have been a few reports of delayed trouble with legacy files and the export is somewhat helpful as insurance.