Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions [LWN.net]

Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

Posted Jun 3, 2009 4:27 UTC (Wed) by dkite (guest, #4577)
Parent article: Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

I'm no fan of copy protection, drm or whatever its called today. But if I
choose to ignore what the author wanted and expressed when they created
the item, it is my risk.

One occasion comes to mind. A PDF for a specific purpose where having a
printed copy (laminated) is the only practical use. It had extensive no
printing protection that no pdf reader could overcome. Printing the screen
worked just fine, and we are proud and happy users of the information in
the format we required.

That was my choice. If the author of the document wants to sue, they can
sue me.

I don't expect the authors of the software to take that risk for me. How
we forget. Dmitry Sklyarov spent time in jail when he exposed the flaws in
Adobe's forgotten scheme. Adobe eventually even opposed the prosecution
(probably to attempt to foil a revolt among their developers). Not a
pleasant situation to be in.

So if you want to be a poster child for fair use rights, fight in court
and make law, great. Maybe the authors of Okular don't want to do that.

Fine with me.

Derek

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Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

Posted Jun 3, 2009 18:05 UTC (Wed) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

Following your logic, clive (http://clive.sourceforge.net ) is a gross violation of usage restrictions. Likewise all those Firefox plug-ins that allow you to download the flash movies instead of using the built-in player.

Stretching your logic a bit further, the pop-up blocker of Firefox would be "dangerous" - the site wanted you to see a pop-up as part of the document. Who are you to decide the pop-up is not relevant? Who are you to use technical workarounds to prevent the starving author from receiving his due funding?

Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

Posted Jun 4, 2009 0:39 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]

This isn't about the "authors of Okular", just as it isn't about the authors of Xpdf. This is about the Debian package maintainers. The xpdf package maintainer did the right thing, by the standards of the Debian project. The Okular maintainers did the wrong thing, by the same standards.