On Sat, Mar 12, 2005 at 11:27:45AM +0100, Frederic Peters wrote: > Derek B. Noonburg wrote: > > > Don't get me wrong -- I don't particularly like DRM either, and if > > Debian were campaigning to convince people not to use it, I'd be happy > > to see it. But simply blowing off an author like that is, in my > > opinion, rather hypocritical. > > That was my initial reaction <http://bugs.debian.org/298584> but I > thought other xpdf-derived software had a flag to override this and > got your agreement about it. > > I'll add a comment to README.Debian.
There was a lengthy discussion about this on the Debian lists a few years back when I was first asked to override the DRM tests in Xpdf: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2001/03/msg00862.html Yes we have patched Xpdf since May 2002 (version 1.01) to override the permission checks. The problem is that the permissions feature does not allow legal fair use of protected PDF documents, such as copying small portions for quoting, research, conversion to other formats etc. The consensus was that document publishers must not be allowed to override people's fair use of their documents. One particular post is worth reading: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2001/03/msg00927.html I have not made these clarifications clear in the source code. I will correct that at the next opportunity. Frederic, you may open this discussion again on debian-devel or debian-legal if you wish, especially wrt pdftohtml. I think consistency between PDF reading applications would be good. Hamish -- Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
