[austechwriter] Re: Change a PDF?

Deb, it was encrypted and protected for a reason:  to stop people doing 
precisely what you are trying to do to their proprietary and copyright 
material.

Hacking in to decrypt a password protected Acrobat file to alter its 
content could be considered an infringement, both of the digital copyright 
laws and of various software anti-tampering laws.  (Copyright might still 
subsist with the original author of the document or it would not have been 
protected.)

My advice: Leave it alone and let your customer know that it is both 
unethical and illegal to tamper with the file and that you and your 
customer could be subject to penalties and damages, should the 
originator(s) of the document ever find out what you are trying to do to 
their work, which might well happen in such a public forum as this.

Let me assure you that, if you were trying to do this to one of my or my 
clients' documents, I would take immediate action for redress.

Of course, you could always use the original to "inspire" your next work, 
but you'd still be sailing very close to the wind on the copyright 
legislation and would almost certainly come a cropper.

My goodness, Deb, you're at the Australian National University and, with 
all the publicity over university plagiarism hitting the Mistral at the 
moment, they MUST know better!

Sincerely,

Michael Granat
Write Ideas
Carnegie, Victoria, Australia.

P.S.  Now you know why I send my copyright material using Acrobat, not Word!

At 09:45 30/5/2003 +1000, you wrote:
>Downloaded a copy of Freehand but it won't open the file because it is =
>encrypted.
>
>Looks like the PDF is password protected.  I am trying to track the =
>person who created the PDF to see if they can remember the password!
>
>In the meantime, anyone know how to hack into a password protected PDF?  =

**************************************************
To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to 
austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to 
austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field.

To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 
"unsubscribe" in the Subject field.

To search the austechwriter archives, go to 
www.freelist.org/archives/austechwriter

To contact the list administrator, send a message to 
austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
**************************************************

Other related posts: