On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 01:32:42PM +0100, Frederik Schwarzer wrote: > We want all the world to respect our GPL limitations to keep things > free. So we should respect other people's right to restrict their > works. If you disagree, discuss it with the author who applied that > limitation.
There's a crucial difference. GPL is based in copyright law, so others
cannot choose under law whether to respect the copyright. However no
law gives the PDF authors the alleged right to restrict its use in
this way. There are very specific rights equally recognized by law,
like some fair use rights, that DRM restrictions tend to hinder.
There's also the very important difference between being legally
forbidden from doing something and being technically prevented from
doing it (whether doing it would be legal or not - and in most cases
printing a PDF where this stupid DRM bit is set would still be legal).
So DRM in software means it's intentionally crippled for the users,
preventing them from exercising even their very rights under the law.
That's not something to support.
Not that I consider this a major issue, because there's the
configuration option.
Sami
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