Re: [Swftools-common] respecting copy protection?

[Matthias Kramm]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 03:14:39AM -0400, Nick Guenther <address@hidden> wrote:
> Now: why does this line exist?
>     if(di->nocopy) {
>         msg("<error> PDF disallows copying.");
>         return 0;
>     }

That's a good question.

Mainly, it's politeness- if the author of a PDF doesn't want you
to extract things out of that PDF, then we should respect that.
(And yes, I'm aware that many people just set the "disallow copy"
 bit in PDFs without noticing it, which is a pain in the ass)

The author of xpdf (the PDF parser that pdf2swf is built upon) has
a similar opinion in this matter:
    http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/cracking.html

It's also to be on the safe side- things like pdf2swf are no
hacker tools, they are tools for converting PDFs where you do have
all rights and everything. And there *are* laws against circumventing
"effective" copyright protections, even though the "nocopy" flag in PDF 
is hardly "effective".

That being said, if a swftools user is of a somehow different opinion
concerning how "copy protected" PDFs should be handled, he's free
to disable the above check in his own installation.

Greetings

Matthias

-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Guenther
Sent: Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 03:14:39AM -0400
To address@hidden
Subject: [Swftools-common] respecting copy protecti
Hi list,
(first: swfextractor is really really really prime. it's a precision
scalpel for SWFs (rare) that does exactly what I need it to and no
more or no less. Thank you)

Now: why does this line exist?
    if(di->nocopy) {
        msg("<error> PDF disallows copying.");
        return 0;
    }

Are you just being polite? Is there some rule that Adobe enforces
(somehow? I don't know how they'd have the jurisdiction for this) that
the nocopy bit must be respected OR ELSE? Or some combination of the
two, like that (perhaps) you afraid that if you didn't do this and a
bunch of rouge PDF "hacker" apps would come out and adobe would blame
you?

please CC me, I'm not on the list, I'm just a passing curiousor.
-Nick