DRM: Still Hurting Paying Customers The Most

from the the-internet-is-for-opening-client-side-PDFs-apparently dept

Today's Stupid DRM Trick is brought to you by Adobe LiveCycle ES3 and Windows 10.

Starting in August, we started to receive noise from end-users on unable to open DRM protected PDFs, ones that are protected with 2016-17 policy, with the use of Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat. Users are mostly facing issue on seeing the below message when opening the PDFs: Error Message: "This computer must be connected to the Internet in order to open this document. Your permission to open this document offline has expired. Make sure this computer is connected to the network and the Adobe Experience Manager- Forms Server(Document Security) is running." or "This computer must be connected to the network in order to open this document. Your permission to open this document offline has expired. Make sure this computer is connected to the network and the Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management Server is running."

While I can understand some companies might want to prevent unauthorized users from reading PDFs possibly containing sensitive material, the fact that an authorized user's computer has to "phone home" to Adobe to read a PDF generated (and held) by a third party is ridiculous. While password-protection schemes may have their drawbacks, the LiveCycle solution doesn't do much for employees (or students -- LiveCycle is also used for courseware) who might not have access to an internet connection (an unfortunate reality when traveling) but still need access to these documents.

However, this problem isn't completely Adobe's fault (although the DRM's insistence on an internet connection still is). It appears a Windows update is what's preventing LiveCycle from phoning home.

Today, I am unable to access the pdf courseware on my system due to the following error message: "This computer must be connected to the Internet in order to open this document. Your permission to open this document offline has expired. Make sure this computer is connected to the network and the Adobe Experience Manager- Forms Server(Document Security) is running." Now, I know my system is connected to the network but I can't figure out what else is wrong. Usually, when I open these pdfs, I get a login prompt but this time, nothing. Please help ASAP. But even after re-downloading the material from aspen portal once again, it still doesn't work. I had installed the Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1511 for x64-based Systems (KB3163018) on 30-06-2016 and the only issue I faced before was that the login prompt was not appearing but I could still open the document. Now, I can't even open the document.

Once again, a Windows update breaks something that was working, leaving end users to clean up the company's mess. Another user had the same update kill their VPN access. And if it's not blocking connections, it's killing webpages accessed through Microsoft's own Edge browser. Fun stuff. These not-all-that-optional cumulative updates tend to create as many problems as they solve and Microsoft's own "help" isn't all that helpful, leading to this sort of exasperated response.

The trouble we have is I have over 200 Windows 10 machines and cannot go to each one and run a tool to view the updates. We use WSUS and I had hoped that there would be a way to split out the Cumulative update so we can disable the two patches I mentioned and then have that push. I have for the time being approved the update for removal in WSUS so it will handle removing it. I am concerned about the other fixes and not having them. Does MSFT QA these updates or are they blaming Cisco on this one?

So, we have two issues, neither of them useful to end users. On Adobe's end, we have a protection scheme that requires an internet connection. That's classic DRM -- phone home, get permission… all well and good (NOT REALLY) until someone needs access to documents but can't because they're not connected to the internet.

Then we have an update that breaks the connection Adobe's DRM relies on, forcing the same problem on users who do have internet access. The problem with DRM schemes like these is that they rely on a bunch of parts that aren't interconnected (Adobe, Windows) but both have to be working properly to get the job done... rather than just, say, open Adobe Reader and be done with it. Subtract an internet connection and Adobe's documents are useless, even to authorized users. Throw a suprisingly volatile Windows update into the mix and end users doing everything right are still screwed. Combine the two and sensitive documents are suddenly so "protected" that a majority of users can't even view them. And, remember, this is a "privilege" corporate customers pay for.

DRM: still mostly useless and still mainly a pain in the ass for paying customers.

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Filed Under: drm, livecycle es3, pdf, windows 10

Companies: adobe, microsoft