I am officially an old person, as I have subscribed to a magazine. It’s niche, but it’s been around a long time, and having enjoyed a lot of issues in my childhood that were given to me for free, I feel I should give back.

I’m wondering if there are precautions I should take. Can any sort of copy protection be put into PDFs that I should strip out? If I share them as a torrent, should I be worried that the publisher can tell where they came from?

    • Daniel Quinn@lemmy.caEnglish
      16·
      1 year ago

      The easiest way to confirm this would be:

      1. Find out how to list the metadata from a PDF.
      2. List the metadata from a known-to-have-stuff-you-don’t-want PDF.
      3. “Print” the new PDF from the old one
      4. List the metadata from the new PDF.
      • Timwi@kbin.social
        19·
        1 year ago

        This obviously assumes that you know exactly what metadata you want to eliminate and how to view it.

        The OP’s whole point of asking is that they don’t know the former.

        • sebinspace@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          8·
          1 year ago

          This, essentially. Like until I tried to move music from iTunes to Foobar, I didn’t learn that metadata was even a thing, and apparently neither does Apple.

    • amigan@lemmy.dynatron.meEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      If you use ghostscript, it absolutely should, but you’re probably better off using something like cpdf.