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You're thinking of the wrong kind of DRM. PDFs can be protected in a variety of ways. There are user passwords, where the reader must enter a password in order to view the document; owner passwords, where the document is freely readable by anyone but may restrict the user from editing, printing, or highlighting and copying text from the document (this is the kind we're discussing here); and ADEPT DRM, where the file is entirely encrypted and locked to a certain user and up to six of their devices.
To clarify, anyone could have read the file I linked; it wasn't the kind that's restricted to a particular user. It just couldn't be printed, edited, or have text copied and pasted from. It was a sample file created by a commercial PDF editor to demonstrate the owner password functionality of their editor. I linked it to show the same, that it was a readable but not copyable file of which it was trivial to find a way to copy the text; e.g. for converting into a more ideal format for an e-book reader.
Lastly, I do wish to thank you for being part of this conversation rather than deploying bans, unfortunately the more common response to disagreements on the Internet. My thanks. I understand this is something of an edge case--while it involves circumventing the limitations placed on the file, it's doubtful there's any copyright infringement going on in copying text from one format to another for personal use. I appreciate anyone willing to read this before condemning it as some form of piracy.
Regardless, I must affirm my agreement with your stance on copyright violation; it just seems unlikely that this and that are the same, and certainly linking to a readable PDF isn't.
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