Getting Around PDF Rights Restrictions?

RedBear asks: "It is common these days for government agencies to offer official forms online as fillable PDF forms. What is not so common is for them to offer 'rights-enabled' versions of these PDF forms that can be filled, saved locally and changed using free the Adobe Acrobat Reader PDF software. I'm sure many of you have experienced this phenomenon: You take the time to fill in a PDF form online and then discover that the only way to retain your changes is to print it. What cross-platform methods exist to allow common users to save filled PDF forms in a way that will allow easy future editing, without costing hundreds of dollars? FOSS software is of course preferable, and cross-platform between at least Mac and Windows is essential."

"The main problem is this: At a small non-profit I do tech support, for it would cost hundreds of dollars to outfit just a few client computers with the full version of Adobe Acrobat, which is the only way to let their users save and update the government PDF forms they use. The official Adobe method for creating 'rights-enabled' PDF forms is currently by using Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions. As is typical for 'enterprise' software, you won't easily find a price for it online, only a link to contact Adobe. A line on this page that says something about it costing 'several thousands of dollars'. Talks with the document creators (state government agency) to get them to create 'rights-enabled' versions of these documents have predictably gone nowhere. I thought PDF was a relatively open format, so the question is what alternatives exist to let small agencies, or even individuals, either save the forms in a portable/re-editable manner with some inexpensive extra software or completely bypass the restrictions the same way that LiveCycle Reader Extensions does?

Adobe notes that LiveCycle Reader Extensions enables 'hidden functionality' in Adobe Acrobat Reader software. I'm assuming this doesn't mean just flipping a bit in the file, or this would already be easy to do with some third-party software. I'm also assuming that PDF password crackers have nothing to do with adding this functionality. Last but not least I'm assuming that even if a rights-enabled PDF document is obtained the additional functionality of saving and re-editing forms will only work in Adobe Acrobat Reader and not in other free PDF viewer applications like Apple's Preview.app, xpdf, Foxit PDF Reader, etc. This last isn't really a technical problem since Acrobat Reader 5.1 or later is available for Mac, Win32 and Linux. Any corrections to the above assumptions would be very welcome.

Alternatives we have found so far:

• A website that offers inexpensive conversion of the PDF document into a rights-enabled version. Would have to be used for every form and every new version of the form that came out. Anyone used this service? Is it legit and/or legal? How are they doing the conversion? If they can do it, why can't we do it locally? What exactly is involved with creating a rights-enabled PDF anyway?
• One cross-platform commercial software product (pdf-FormServer)that seems to offer the ability to save and re-edit PDF forms for under $45 per computer. Available for Mac OS X and Windows. A lot cheaper than Acrobat but would still need to be on every computer used by clients. Not cheap for a non-profit on a shoe-string budget. Anyone using this software care to comment? How seamless is it?

Supplemental question: Can this problem be put into the light of being an accessibility issue to help motivate these government agencies to comply with the current online accessibility laws? My hunch is no, since it's only about saving the filled form that you've already accessed, but maybe we can work in something about not being able to use the form(s) offline? (Which would be possible with a rights-enabled version of the documents and any local copy of Acrobat Reader.) The IRS website notes that every PDF form they provide after October 25, 2004 will be rights-enabled. Are they doing it solely for user convenience or are they complying with some official government policy that we can reference? Any thoughts?

Note that all links have been coralized, so remove '.nyud.net:8090' from the domain name if you really want to /. the original website."

Short Answer - no

[L. VeGas]

I've been elbow deep in pdf formats, Acrobat software, postscript, ghostscript, software alternatives and workarounds for years.

Adobe got in early with the format, and it became successfull because of the free reader. Far superior opportunities exist now (xml, anyone?), but, sadly, we're locked in to the ever "evolving" pdf format because of history.

I wish we could just scrap it and start over.

Hundreds of dollars is actually getting off cheap compared to the ridiculous amount of time I've spent trying to find alternatives.

Sort of a 1201 issue, sort of not

[cpt kangarooski]

For forms created by officers or employees of the United States government (that is, the federal government), in their official capacity, and to some extent contractors if they can be construed as employees for purposes of determining the author of the work, there is no copyright. This is because such works are uncopyrightable under 17 USC 105.

Additionally, forms are generally considered uncopyrightable anyway. You cannot copyright a name, or a title, or a short clause or phrase. You cannot copyright the format or typography of a work. And you cannot copyright anything you did not create yourself. If you write down that, say, 12 inches equals 1 foot, that's not your creation and is uncopyrightable. Nor can you copyright an idea, method, or system for doing things. Where there is only one, or are only a few ways of reasonably presenting an idea, no copyright is allowed, lest the copyright effectively protect the unprotectable idea. The end result is that forms aren't copyrightable. Instructions accompanying it, if creative (and probably of substantial length) could be. And maybe even diagrams. But not the basic form itself. And again, if the author is the United States, there can't be a copyright no matter how creative the work is.

This has implications for the anticircumvention provisions in the Copyright Act. 17 USC 1201 prohibits the act of circumventing an access control applied to a copyrighted work, and trafficking in devices that can circumvent access controls and copyright controls. While circumvention itself isn't really interesting here, as circumvention on one work poses no threat to other works, the trafficking provisions are.

The sort of thing the original poster seems to want to do might involve 17 USC 1201(b):

(1) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that--
(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof;
(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof; or
(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof.

If the tool is primarily designed or produced for circumventing protection for public domain forms, (b)(1)(A) isn't applicable. Likewise, if the tool-maker or other distributors of the tool take care to not get involved with its use in conjunction with copyrighted works, (b)(1)(C) isn't applicable. Of course, just because someone says that this is their intent doesn't mean that a court would necessarily take their word for it.

The main sticking point is (b)(1)(B). The tool could be used for either sort of work. And there is likely little use (or worse still, commercially significant use) of it in conjunction with public domain documents. Thus, it could still be prohibited to traffic in them.

Could go either way, but remember that a similar argument (for access circumvention devices) was made for DeCSS in the Reimerdes case, and was not accepted by the court.