Sometimes you really don't want the author to know...

Sometimes you really don't want the author to know...

Posted Mar 31, 2005 14:52 UTC (Thu) by cpm (guest, #3554)
In reply to: Sometimes you really don't want the author to know... by eru
Parent article: Unexpected features in Acrobat 7

If I want the author to know, I can email, call, write, them and
tell them.

If I don't, or more to the point, don't care, then I don't. It shouldn't
be a mandatory, or opt-out (why is this in contemporary parlance, is
it the spam issues and the spam laws? yes!) issue.

A PDF *should* be an electronic document. Nothing more.

It can be copied, messed with, forged, and all that rot. To add all these
bells and whistles to it, to fend off these old-as-the-written-word
issues with "documents" (What is a document anyway?*) is to create
yet-still-another legal morass of so-called "Intellectual Property"
disputes.

It's a PDF. Once it has been printed, it's as good as the paper it's
printed on. Want to have some assurance that its "real" ? wrap it
in gpg/pgp before you send it.

Oh, yes, many will say that using decent crypto/signature is too much
bother, and they are right. But everything else is often simple
to break/ignore/circumvent etcetera.

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