Re: Xpdf fuckware
On Sun, 11 Mar 2001, Joseph Carter wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 11, 2001 at 03:15:26PM -0300, Henrique M Holschuh wrote:
> > Regardless of that, I don't think one should simply remove the restriction.
> >
> > IMHO, the patch should, as others said, pop-up a window notifying the user
> > that the autor of the document requests that such an operation should not be
> > done, and that proceeding with the operation anyway might be in violation of
> > copyright rights.
>
> This is not necessarily true. Fair use allows a lot more than the corps
> would like you to believe. I'm primarily interested in knowing that a PDF
> has permission to do certain things turned off so I know when I need to
> make a big stink about it with the people who made the PDF.
I undestand "fair use" to include "making copies for personal use". It
appears that xpdf is trying to "help" the author exert control where there
is no legal basis.
Taking another POV, can't PDF be translated into something that doesn't
inforce such author desires, like LaTeX?
Personally, while I think this contradicts the normal "let the upstream
make the final decision about how the code works", Debian often makes
minor modification to the authors code as allowed under the license, and I
think that the freedom issue is more a Debian principle than "bow to the
author". I'm in favor of applying the patch, as is. Even supporting this
non-legal behavior with an error message seems to me to forget the point.
I have a right to make copies of anything that you make available to me,
for my own use. The only control you have over my behavior, under that
law, comes when I try to distribute that work or parts of it, either as my
own, or in some cases even when giving credit to the authors (See IEEE
standards).
At the very least, the best that could be implimented (legally) with this
bit, would be to restrict the process to one copy per user. This seems
like a lot of work to me, for very little extra utility.
Copyright notice identifies the controling entity.The license details the
end user's rights not already provided by copyright law, in most cases
removing a restriction provided by the law. In no case can the license
require the user give up rights granted in copyright law. (such as fair
use) This software attempts to enforce a license restriction that is not
allowed under the law on which the license is founded.
Apply the patch.
Luck,
Dwarf
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