Re: PDF is blocked for printing, etc. OK for acroread (it behaves as expected), but KPDF allows me to print it, even if it is protected! Why?

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Mikhail Gusarov <dottedmag@dottedmag.net> writes:
> Twas brillig at 17:32:51 19.04.2010 UTC+02 when
> Luca.Merciadri@student.ulg.ac.be did gyre and gimble:

>  >> Pdf "anti-features" are fake security. Don't trust on them, never.
>  ML> And what do you suggest if one wants some real protection _and_ the
>  ML> benefits of a format like PDF? Thanks.

> There is no "real" protection.

I think people are not understanding why users use this feature in some
environments.

Yes, sometimes it's a misguided attempt at DRM, but I've more often seen
it inside a workplace as defense in depth against *mistakes*.  One might,
for instance, mark a document as not printable because it contains social
security numbers and salary information and it's corporate policy not to
create hard copies of the document beause of the risk of exposure of
personal information that might put the company at legal risk.

That's not to say that Debian PDF viewers should support this the way that
Acrobat does, but for that use case, the desired UI is probably something
like a dialog box that pops up and says that the document author has
marked this PDF as not printable and asking the user if they're sure they
want to override.  For this use case, such a warning would probably serve
the same purpose.

(It may well be that some PDF viewers in Debian already implement such a
dialog.)

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>