Have you ever bought a book in PDF format, only to receive it with the annoying password protection popup? You know, the ones that come with digital downloads and/or "free" copies that escort payed hard copies, where you need to type your e-mail every single time you open them. Hey, I'm all for protecting your content and such, but this just feels like I'd get more value if I downloaded a pirated copy!If you are anything like me, you have a whole library of e-books you use on a daily basis as reference. And typing passwords that you cannot save gets very annoying, very fast! Oh and since I mentioned piracy --
This is not a walkthrough to cracking passwords, just a way to remove the nagging. It probably voids something, however for me it's the only alternative to actually downloading a pirated copy! Won't the publishers ever learn?
Meh, enough talk, on to the action!
- Grab a copy of qpdf using
sudo apt-get install qpdf
- Once that's done with, run the following
qpdf --password [mypassword] --decrypt [protectedfile].pdf [newfile].pdf]
- where mypassword is the password you have for the protectedfile
You new pdf file should have now all the features ( full text for searching, indexes, links, etc ) -- enjoy!