But what I am wondering though, is how is that string displayed. It must from the PDF right? Thus, the PDF is blocking content?

I tried a PDF with Apple’s Mac OS X Preview, and I get the same text:

To view the full contents of this document, you need a later version of the PDF viewer. You can upgrade to the latest version of Adobe Reader from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

For further support, go to http://www.adobe.com/support/products/acrreader.html

As such, the PDF is FULLY COMPLIANT with ISO 32000-1 which fully documents both the encryption algorithms and include XFA as a normative reference.

Unfortunately, at this time, only Adobe Acrobat & Adobe Reader are fully conforming readers according to the requirements of ISO 32000-1. At such point as other readers upgrade to fully support the requirements of that standard, then they too will be able to view that form w/o the need for the message.

So don’t blame Adobe – they did NOT do anything wrong. Instead, talk to the manufacturers of the other viewer(s) you tried and get them to support the open PDF standard.

Leonard Rosenthol
PDF Standards Architect
Adobe Systems

The issue here is that the creator of the PDF decided to lock in their DRM solution to Adobe (similar to those who use FileOpen, who again only create a plugin for use with Adobe products).

Perhaps Adobe needs to make the side-effects of their PDF protection schemes more clear, but LifeCycle is a very popular solution for big business with few alternatives (because it provides content protection password based encryption can’t and it unlocks features in Adobe Reader not usually available).

You should probably be mad at the PDF creator / publisher, not Adobe, for locking themselves into a proprietary solution.

How SHOULD big business get around the limits of the most popular PDF reader? Turn to PDF based web applications such as PDFescape.

Note: This web application won’t open your problematic files, but it will help a company from creating them in the first place.