Jonathan Corbet wrote a piece on LWN about Okular and it's implementation of user permission restrictions in PDFs (sometimes errantly refered to as "DRM"). This is actually something it has done since it was KPDF back in KDE 3. Obviously, permissions in PDFs are a generally misguided attempt at protecting the agenda of a publisher in a demonstrably ineffective way that comes at a cost to things like the concepts of fair use.
So what's up with Okular having support for permissions? It's quite simple: not only is permissions in the PDF spec, but there are organizations in the world who, for contractual or legal reasons, require permissions in PDFs be respected.
Do we simply not serve those users needs? Do we "know better" for the user who says "I want to accept the terms of the publisher of this document"? Of course not; that's rather user unfriendly in itself.
So the strategy adopted was quite simple: make it an option that the user may choose to abide by the permissions flags in a PDF or not.
With the KDE configuration lock-down system, this can even be made as a policy decision within an organization, either by providing a locked-down default value for this option or just removing the option altogether with the "skip_drm" KAuthorization entry. It's even a compile time option for those who wish to be particularly hardcore about it: -DOKULAR_FORCE_DRM.
The important point, however, is that Okular (and KPDF before it) does not make that decision for the user. Okular is intentionally crafted in such a way that permissions are not pushed on anyone while at the same time not removing it by force from anyone either.
That choice is the ultimate in user respect.
As for KDE itself, as much as such a statement can be made for a globally distributed community of individuals, we do not support the notion of permissions in principle due to its impact on individual rights and freedoms. If we felt otherwise, we'd simply enforce permissions in PDFs rather than go to lengths to make it optional.
There's an old addage that goes something like "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it". With Okular, we do not agree with permissions but we do defend your right to opt into it should you wish. We do not see it as our role to go around telling others what they can and can not do and "fixing" PDFs by ignoring permissions with no option to do otherwise. By the same token, we also do not see it as our role to remove rights from the user and force such silliness on them either: if you wish to disagree with the author's usage of permission restrictions, you are empowered to do so with Okular.
You choose, and we defend your right to do so.
(Albert Astals Cid has also blogged about this issue. It's a nice read from one of the primary people behind KPDF/Okular.)
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6 comments:
The addage you cited come from Voltaire, a XVIIIth century french philosopher. He wrote some wich can be translated : "I do not agree with you, but I will fight to death to enable you to say it"
Source : http://www.horaz.com/03_Citations/AUTEURS/Voltaire.htm (in french)
Bizarrely, I can distantly remember having some e-mail conversation about this some years ago and this seemed like the sensible consensus at the time - keep the user, or the owner of the computer at least, in control of what their software does.
It's nice to see that there is a universal higher level setting so organisations can potentially set this and enforce it on their users on their computers if they choose.
@Vincent: It appears it was actually written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in the The Friends of Voltaire. She presented it as a summary of Voltaire's opinion, not as a direct quote. However, it is commonly mis-attributed to Voltaire (but it looks like no one has been able to find an original source where he said this).
http://www.classroomtools.com/voltaire.htm
Right. But the point that is causing comotion in Debian is not really the fact that Okular gives the user an options. The point is rather why enabling it by default? You say:
"As for KDE itself, as much as such a statement can be made for a globally distributed community of individuals, we do not support the notion of permissions in principle due to its impact on individual rights and freedoms. If we felt otherwise, we'd simply enforce permissions in PDFs rather than go to lengths to make it optional."
Isn't this reason enough to enable the user to copy by default, then?
I think it is important to note that I believe you have been very friendly and balanced in your opinion, and that Pino, on the other hand, questioned the rights of people expressing their opinions to do so, and argued that Okular would not help people "disobey" by default, in the mailing list thread, which by no means goes together with the addage you talked about.
i agree with you. but what's the point of having this feature if u can disable it? it's useless as long as u can easily disable it.
@Gustavo Noronha: it's a matter of respect for the publisher/author. we don't encourage people to share music outside of the copyright backed agreements, either. this has nothing to do with whether we agree with it or not, but whether we respect the humans behind those decisions in the first place.
we make our statement, and free our users, but making it a user opt-in feature.
our role is not that of guerrilla libarators, but of technology providers who also hope to convey a concrete realization of Freedom along the way. that implies, at least to me, a more measured approach where we stop fighting everyone and everything that doesn't see eye to eye with us and create a way to dialog with them while ensuring the rights and freedoms of our users.
it's a hard balance, and we'll still piss people off from time to time of course, but playing with a long term and politically minded strategy is the soundest approach to us.
sometimes, the "hard line" freedom fighters cut off our nose to spite our face and while taking hard line stands for freedom end up not spreading any more freedom in practice and simply make it harder to move forward with those who are trying to remove freedoms, often not realizing that is what they are doing.
this is a case where i feel the author of the article and Debian as a community are doing exactly that, though with the best of intentions at heart.
@el7azeen: there are three good reasons for the option:
it shows we respect the intentions of publishers/authors. the first step in helping people understand often is to remove issues of petty argumentation. completely denying that PDF permissions exist is a great way to piss off publishers/authors so that they don't even come to the table to talk.
second, it lets users see who's making poor decisions. we aren't here to hide the shortcomings of others, and i'm quite happy to show a user that $PUBLISHER has made a decision to take away your freedoms. we're also the ones who restore them, of course. ;)
third, for those who are legally or contractually obligated to respect these permissions, which are usually large institutions (government offices, schools, corporations), they can choose for themselves to lock this feature on using the kde kiosk system. this is not the end result we wish to see, but it's better than them saying "we can't use this Free software desktop stuff". one step at a time: get them using it, teach them about the problems with PDF permissions and DRM.
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