Strange behaviour of PDF security ·

05 Jan 2024, 00:00

When printing the document using Adobe PDF printer, I get this:

This PostScript file was created from an encrypted PDF file.Redistilling encrypted PDF is not permitted. 

But if I look in the PDF file (open without any password), it says

Why can't I print it? Even through a physical printer?

3 Answers

I got that message using ps2pdf.

The solution was to edit the PS file manually and to delete these lines:

%% Removing the following eleven lines is illegal, subject to the Digital Copyright Act of 1998. mark currentfile eexec [...] cleartomark 

It's hard to know why the physical printer in question doesn't work, I'm assuming that it doesn't give you any helpful errors.

There are a number of possible solutions;

• You could export as an image from Acrobat, and print the image.
• If your printer is a PostScript or PCL printer you could use Ghostscript to consume the PDF and produce either PostScript or PCL which you could then send to the printer.
• You could use Ghostscript's mswinpr2 device to consume the PDF file, render it to an image and send that image to the printer.
• The old gsview program had a similar utility called gsprint which makes it easier to do the same task, it needs Ghostscript to be installed as well.
• You could print to a PostScript file from Acrobat, then edit the PostScript file to remove the portion of the program that checks for 're-dictilling'. Despite the threatening language surrounding it, if you aren't creating a new PDF file I'm pretty confident this is legal.
• You could try printing from a different PDF consuming application, it seems to me this is a problem with Adobe Acrobat rather than the PDF file.
• Try printing to the Microsoft Windows 'print to PDF' printer, then try printing the PDF file which results from that.

The Adobe PDF printer is not a physical printer and involves emission of Postscript created based on the content and characteristics of the PDF you have opened.

The printing permission shown in your screenshot would apply to direct printing but since you're really doing more than that (first converting to Postscript via the Adobe PDF Printer) that allowed permission doesn't seem applicable.

ncG1vNJzZmirpJawrLvVnqmfpJ%2Bse6S7zGiorp2jqbawutJobHJoYWmDeYWOrKurmZ6csm6uxKGYr6Gfqr9uu8Vmp52eXaiypMHRoquy

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