On Fri, 17 May 2002 08:14:18 +0200, "Dawes, Rogan (ZA - Johannesburg)" said: > If the PDF is openable and viewable, but is "protected", so that you can't > select or print or annotate, that is easily bypassed with almost any > non-Adobe PDF viewer, such as xpdf, which simply elects not to honour that > setting in the PDF. The data is all there, because you can view it, it is > simply a case of the software choosing to not let you select it. Find some > software that doesn't honour those document settings, and you are on your > way. > > As I recall, there was some discussion about this issue on the xpdf lists, > or somewhere, about whether xpdf should honour the document requests or not, > but it is really moot, since the source is there, just modify it to suit. I > think that was the conclusion by the xpdf developers, so they simply didn't > bother honouring the setting. This must have been pre-DMCA. I would recommend that the xpdf developers not visit the US, lest they be Skylarov'ed. (The vuln-dev connection? Consider why Alan Cox censored a Linux kernel changelog - but further discussion should probably be moved to a political list. If you're in the US and of voting age, contact your Congresscreature and tell them you want them to support Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) in his attempts to fix the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA). We now return you to your regularly scheduled vuln-dev discussion, which may be in violation of the anti-circumvention clause.... -- Valdis Kletnieks Computer Systems Senior Engineer Virginia Tech
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri May 17 2002 - 09:15:41 PDT