Re: TrueType/OpenType and anti-circumvention laws

[Walter Landry <wlandry@wlandry.net>]

Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> writes:
> On Fri, 2024-02-02 at 20:16 -0500, P. J. McDermott wrote:
>> Ping?  Any thoughts on whether a font DRM modification tool would be
>> legal to distribute and use in Debian given that the DRM is a simple bit
>> field rather than an "effective" TPM such as scrambling or encryption?
>
> Probably best to consult a lawyer there, but ISTR even trivial things
> are supposed to count under the DMCA.

This feels similar to pdf viewers that do not honor DRM bits like 'do
not print', which Debian distributes.  Here is an old email exchange.

  https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/03/msg00308.html

and a bug ticket that implemented DRM stripping.

  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=298584

Running

  pdftohtml --help

on my bookworm system includes the option

  -nodrm                : override document DRM settings

Cheers,
Walter Landry