'Protected' PDF files do exist

'Protected' PDF files do exist

Posted Jun 2, 2009 8:37 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769)
Parent article: Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

the real problem is that people are downloading PDF files with restrictions in the first place

Meanwhile, in the real world, such PDF files continue to exist, and people quite reasonably expect to exercise their fair use / fair dealing rights.

Perhaps free PDF-generating software by default should turn on the restriction flags, to encourage use of uncrippled PDF readers. That would also negate the argument that only 'hackers' (bad! boo!) would want to copy and paste text from a PDF that has the no-copy flag set.

At the very least, instead of 'forbidden by DRM' the message should say 'this operations is forbidden; to turn off this restriction go to Options->Whatever...'.

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