[plug] MS Curriculum at schools and TAFEs ...

[Christian]

On Sun, Apr 22, 2001 at 08:50:56PM +0800, Andrew Francis wrote:
> > What exactly does the password protect?  Access to the file or simply
> > printing or cut/pasting it?  
> 
> Access to the file. By the way, when I refer to "problems" I'm referring
> to the problems that you'll run into if you *don't* have the password :)

Which sort of makes it a bit pointless then doesn't it?  You create a
PDF that you don't want people to read so you put a password on it...
why not just not give it to anyone?  If you give it to someone then you
would obviously also give them the password at which point you lose all
your protection.  So... why do it?

> > Adobe never seems to
> > have had any trouble exporting their Acrobat viewer software.  I know
> > there is a version of xpdf that Debian's non-us (xpdf-i) but I can't see
> > how the crypto could possible offer any protection.  
> 
> More from the specs:
> 
> "In particular, PDFs stan-dard encryption handler limits the key to 5
> bytes (40 bits) in length, in accor-dance with U.S. cryptographic export
> requirements in effect at the time of initial publication of the PDF 1.3
> specification."

Ah, that would explain it.  :-)

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