The arguments around piracy are less about legality (in most places its copyright infringement which is NOT “stealing” but is illegal). Its more the moral and ethical arguments. Is it moral for a service to remove something that you’ve paid for? Is it ethical for people, through no fault of their own, to not be able to afford entertainment. Is it moral for large corporations to price gouge and continuously Make Line Go Up while offering a continuously worse product? Is it moral to copy software not available in your country? Is it ethical for companies to force people into subscriptions for the sole purpose of making more money when they already have loads? Is it ethical to pirate when companies refuse to support the operating system you have? Is it moral to copy software when the company that makes it is not just unethical but has been found to be taking part in things like genocide? Is it ethical for huge corporations to manipulate democracy and laws to serve their profits at the expense of everyone else? Is capitalism itself ethical?

Most people I know who are anti-pirate just lack an understanding of why people engage in copyright infringement. Calling people “scum” and “thieves” without understanding the very big moral and ethical considerations behind what drives people to piracy is reductionist, ignorant and Othering for the sake of self-superiority.

Not saying that your partner thinks that way, just that its a very common example of thinking that misses the important points and that its not just about what’s legal and what’s not (because there are many things that are or have been illegal that are completely unethical.)

I keep meaning to sign up so now is as good time as any!

Last time I used Acrobat via WINE, it was more work than it was worth to get stable and running without issues :/

I tried doing print to PDF but it flattened the resultant PDF so the layers were lost. Almost all of the software I used to try converting altered the PDF layout in some way and patterns must not change at all, otherwise they get messed up :/

I was already able to remove the edit password with qpdf --decrypt. Most of the PDF editors I used, changed the PDF too much (e.g. added margins/padding) which ruined the very specific layout needed for the patterns to work. There has to be no changes to the PDFs apart from removing the ‘footer’ text :/