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Does this circumvent the DCMA?
Authored by: gibblehey on Jul 05, '02 12:10:10PM
From a legal standpoint, does this mean that Mac OS X circumvents the DCMA?
Isn't this the sort of thing that got Dmitri Skylarov arrested?

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Does this circumvent the DCMA?
Authored by: dexedrine on Jul 05, '02 01:05:36PM

It's an interesting academic question to say the least.

However, this is more of a side-effect than a dedicated cracking solution. Also, I have not tested this technique against documents that require passwords to view them, etc.




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Does this circumvent the DCMA?
Authored by: oem on Jul 05, '02 02:21:07PM

"Also, I have not tested this technique against documents that require passwords to view them, etc."

Well,

I've generated pdf with some password via Indesign export. I've set 2 passwords : 1 for the 'autor (me)' and the second for the one who will read it. (I've not decide to put 2 pass, that's the way it is in ID2). Anyway, i've tried to open it with preview to check if protection was effective : it is.
No password are required at the opening, BUT I had white pages…nothing appearded.
I've not tried anything else, but if a pdf files is password protected it's gonna be unreadable with Preview. (I was in 10.1.4 when I checked this 2 month ago. don't know what would hapen now, and I haven't tried with other files…

oem



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Does this circumvent the DCMA?
Authored by: victory on Jul 06, '02 02:17:16PM
I doubt it. Adobe's PDF is published standard -- neither the Preview app nor any part of OSX is actively trying to 'decrypt' a locked PDF. What got Dmitri S. in trouble was that he found a weakness in the method used to protect Adobe eBook files themselves.
A few other comments:
  • The fact that the OSX 'Print->Preview->PDF' method works with partially locked PDFs is probably a reflection on Adobe's Acrobat Reader app more than anything.
  • The concept of capturing content by 'printing-to-file' is certainly not a new thing. It's just that OSX has now made this easier than ever.
  • I once knew of someone who was miffed at the inability to print/edit a locked PDF. So what did he do? While viewing the file in Acrobat, he screen-captured each page and ran the resulting files through an OCR app... But then it IS true: quite often even common sense and logic doesn't hold up in court.

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