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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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