Subject: Re: Bug#531221: okular: Arbitrarily enforces DRM

From: John Goerzen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 09:10:47 -0500

Marco d'Itri wrote:
> On May 31, Sune Vuorela <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
>> So. you want Okular to by default help you with violating conditions of use of 
>> the document you downloaded?
> Correct, this is what I would like it to do (but I use evince instead,
> which by default does not bother users with this sillyness).
> Users can still legally have rights even if they are forbidden by
> license terms which are effectively void.
> DRM deprives users of such rights.

While completely agreeing with you, Marco, I would like to add a couple
of points.

First off, this is just a flag, and is not really DRM in the sense we
normally understand it: some sort of encryption, etc.  It is easier to
write a PDF viewer that does not honor the flag than to write one that
does, since there is no decryption or anything needed.  Honoring the
flag is an optional "feature", not a prerequisite.

The other point is that the flag has nothing to do with the law.  I can
perfectly well set a flag on a PDF that I generate for myself, and that
doesn't make it illegal to copy text out of the PDF I generate for
myself.  Similarly, just because someone sets the flag on a PDF they
give me, doesn't make it illegal to copy text from that PDF.  Copyright
law, at least in the USA, provides "fair use" rights to copy and
distribute small portions of a work.  Being able to cut and paste just
makes that process slightly faster.  And copyright law does not prevent
you from copying the entire thing, if you keep the result to yourself.
As, of course, cp and the KDE file manager can do (just keeping it in
the same format).

If it is illegal to do something with the document, that is orthogonal
to whether Okular obeys this flag by default, in my mind.

Okular is run by the Debian user.  As our social contract states, "Our
priorities are our users and Free Software."  We can, and should, take
the high road on this and make sure our users have maximum functionality
by default.

-- John