I disagree for a number of reasons. First, I think the reason most people release files as PDF documents is because they have a need for precise formatting which HTML doesn't give. This includes much better print control. Second, PDF doesn't protect text at all; you can select text in even Adobe's PDF viewers for copying. The only viewers out there really designed for such protection are e-book readers. Lastly, I don't think it's the domain of Monks to judge someone's intentions with a project. I'd say that if you don't feel comfortable giving advice to someone, just don't give it. I especially think it's inappropriate to come down condemning someone without any knowledge of how the project will be used. I'd be inclined to think the OP intends to write an engine for searching through PDFs on an intranet, given the insanity of indexing anything more (in Perl, no less). All the above just MHO.
You are probably close to the mark. I don't know if either
of us can generalize as to why people release their work in
PDF (I should have said, "In my experience/opinion"). I
have found that if you copy and paste PDF text, it drops a
given letter from every word, so reconstructing the text is
awfully time-consuming. I do not know if this behavior is
universal or an optional behavior set at the time of creation.
I -did- mean to imply that the seeker was trying to crack
PDFs; I've done the same thing, for (what I believed to be)
legitimate reasons -- namely laziness :) not wanting to type
in all that damn text. But I suppose you are correct in that
without knowing the legality or motive behind the poster's
code, it's wrong to wimp out on answering questions.