Overcoming insufficient permissions for PDF image extraction to JPEG

Hans Barnhofter wrote:
On 29 Jul 2005 07:22:01 -0700, wilt wrote:
BMW holds copyright. That means YOU MUST get BMW permission to use
their illustration in your manual, if you intend to distribute it.
You have the right to photocopy something for your OWN use, such as
a copy in your shop and a copy for your home office. But to copy
something for distribution to others is technically illegal and the
copyright owner can come after you! It is not merely about
'morals', it is about your own risk to LEGAL EXPOSURE and lawsuit.

This is very interesting so it would be nice to get a real legal
opinion as I am NOT a lawyer and I do NOT know or understand
copyright law as it pertains to individual use and I am not a moral
person by any means (I live in a glass house and so do you and BMW).

Does the BMW copyright really say what you imply?

a) For example, does the BMW copyright really prevent you from
PRINTING (for your own personal use) the beemer manual you purchased
for $100 or the bimmer owners manual you downloaded for free from
them? (Note the password protection can disable printing unless you
manually remove that printing restriction as described in this
thread.)

The copyright says that BMW can do as they please with their own data,
subject to a few limitations that come under the general heading of
"fair use". Printing out the entire manual does not in general
constitute "fair use" although since "fair use" is substantially
established by legal precedent rather than by statute there may be
specific exceptions to that general rule.

Your hundred dollars does not buy anything but what BMW provided. If
they chose to disable printing in the PDF they have every right to do
so, and under the DMCA the mere possession of software that
circumvents that restriction can in itself be a criminal offense.

What specifically you can do with what you bought should be covered by
the contract under which you purchased it--there should have been some
page of legalese that you had to agree to before the download would
start. To find out what you are and are not allowed to do under that
contract, you really need to read it.

b) Does the BMW copyright say you can't convert the manual to
Microsoft Word, Microsoft RTF, Adobe FrameMaker, JPEG, GIF, AutoDesk
DXF, Adobe PostScript, etc.? (Note the methods described allow you
to
do all of these conversions, and more.)

Again, you need to read the contract.

c) Does the BMW copyright say you can't add or delete pages from the
documents you bought or downloaded from them? (The methods described
allow you to add and delete pages as desired.)

Once again, you need to read the contract.

d) Does the BMW copyright say you can't cut and paste text from and
to
those documents you bought or downloaded from them for use in an
email or other personal use? (The methods described enable copy and
paste of lines of text as needed.)

Once again you need to read the contract.

e) And, lastly, (and perhaps most important for this thread), does
the BMW copyright say you can not take a JPEG of a page of the
beemer
or bimmer shop manual and then annotate that page with your problem
for the purpose of posting that newly annotated PDF to a bimmer or
beemer forum for the purpose of obtaining help in repairing your
motorcycle or automobile?

If you are not specifically constrained from doing so by the terms of
the contract, that last would very likely come under the heading of
"fair use", however if there has been no court ruling on the specific
circumstances you might still have to defend it.

In summary, my question to the legal folks is, if all these five
desires (printing pages, converting pages, adding or deleting pages,
cutting and pasting text from pages, and annotating pages with
photos
for repair purposes) are actually expressly forbidden in the BMW
copyright, then we should not be running or suggesting this
conversion of password-protected PDF to password-free PDF files!

Removing a password without the permission of the copyright owner
would very likely be a violation of the DMCA, as would the possession
of the means to do so, so it's not terribly wise to be discussing it
in an open forum.

While the motorcycle industry does not have a watchdog agency with the
ferocity of RIAA or MPAA, there's still a remote chance that someone
at BMW might take exception to your activities and make a project of
ruining your life, which unless you are very well off is likely to be
the case if litigation commences even if you win.


--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)