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I have several PDF documents which have the "no copy" and "no print" restriction bits set. Are there any free tools for removing such restrictions, on Linux?

(Please do not suggest pdf2ps | ps2pdf; the size increase is horrible. The originals are fairly large too, so I'd rather use a local tool than a website.)

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Willing to write any code or are you wanting something out of the box? – Aaron Dec 12 '11 at 15:08
Code is okay, although I have a feeling it'll be C, and my C skills are limited to "Hello world". – grawity Dec 12 '11 at 15:13
You could use iText; itextpdf.com/itext.php this can be done in Java. – Aaron Dec 12 '11 at 15:30
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3 Answers

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You can probably use pdftk. Something like

pdftk in.pdf output out.pdf allow AllFeatures

should do the job.

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This would work if the password is known. – Scott McClenning Dec 13 '11 at 2:39
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If you've got ghostscript installed try simply:

gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=%stdout% -c .setpdfwrite -f locked.pdf > unlocked.pdf
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FOSS-wise, there is PDFCrack, not sure if it does actually remove the security though, it's just a password cracker. I generally turn to some free trial software, A-PDF Restrictions Remover, it's easier to use.

It might be a lot harder if it's a recent PDF version though, I think they really increased the security recently.

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