RANT: Fairchild datasheet encrypted!?

[jolshefsky]

I am stupefied that, after finding a Fairchild part and looking it up on their site, that their datasheet is actually encrypted. The FSUSB30 is a USB data switch and the datasheet on the Fairchild site won't even open using several of Adobe's PDF viewers.

I did find the device on Mouser (512-FSUSB30MUX) and its datasheet at least opens. But I like to do something as simple as naming the file with the part's description (e.g. "FSUSB30 Lower-Power, Two-Port, High-Speed USB 2.0 Switch.pdf") but upon selecting the title in the datasheet, I had to strangely go to select "Edit:Copy" as the hotkey doesn't work and were greet with an error: "Without the owner password, you do not have permission to copy portions of this document."

I—oh my-god—am so friggin' mind-blown, I can't even think straight right now. This is beyond daft. It's the kind of insane logic of the Joker in Batman. No reason at all but to perhaps drive engineers mad. What is the reason? As copy protection, this is pathetic—it is merely to keep the honest man frustrated and annoyed.

 

[wraper]

I did find the device on Mouser (512-FSUSB30MUX) and its datasheet at least opens. But I like to do something as simple as naming the file with the part's description (e.g. "FSUSB30 Lower-Power, Two-Port, High-Speed USB 2.0 Switch.pdf") but upon selecting the title in the datasheet, I had to strangely go to select "Edit:Copy" as the hotkey doesn't work and were greet with an error: "Without the owner password, you do not have permission to copy portions of this document."

Frankly, are you first day on the internet? In me experience about half of PDF documents have copying disabled.

[wraper]

BTW datasheet from the fairchild website opens completely fine in chrome and adobe reader.

[CatalinaWOW]

I have had no trouble saving complete files like this.  I can understand manufacturers wanting to prevent edits on their datasheets, and I actually want it too.  Can you imaging the problems if a pranking script kiddy decided to do a little editing on pin assignments?  Or any of a number of other devilish things that I won't publish for fear of putting ideas in peoples heads.

[Zero999]

I did find the device on Mouser (512-FSUSB30MUX) and its datasheet at least opens. But I like to do something as simple as naming the file with the part's description (e.g. "FSUSB30 Lower-Power, Two-Port, High-Speed USB 2.0 Switch.pdf") but upon selecting the title in the datasheet, I had to strangely go to select "Edit:Copy" as the hotkey doesn't work and were greet with an error: "Without the owner password, you do not have permission to copy portions of this document."

I've not had any problems with this myself, see quote below. Just don't use Adobe Acrobat reader. I use Fire Fox's built-in PDF reader, which renders most PDF files fine, even though it is a bit slow.

Description
The FSUSB30 is a low-power, two-port, high-speed USB
2.0  switch.  Configured  as  a  double-pole  double-throw
(DPDT)  switch,  it  is  optimized  for  switching  between  two
high-speed  (480Mbps)  sources  or  a  Hi-Speed  and  Full-
Speed  (12Mbps)  source.  The  FSUSB30  is  compatible
with   the   requirements   of   USB2.0   and   features   an
extremely  low  on  capacitance  (C
ON
)  of  3.7pF.  The  wide
bandwidth  of  this  device  (720MHz),  exceeds  the  band-
width needed to pass the third harmonic, resulting in sig-
nals  with  minimum  edge  and  phase  distortion.  Superior
channel-to-channel crosstalk minimizes interference.

https://www.fairchildsemi.com/datasheets/FS/FSUSB30.pdf

[rstofer]

https://www.fairchildsemi.com/datasheets/FS/FSUSB30.pdf

Opened right up with Chrome and whatever the embedded .pdf reader is.

[Farley]

I am stupefied that, after finding a Fairchild part and looking it up on their site, that their datasheet is actually encrypted. The FSUSB30 is a USB data switch and the datasheet on the Fairchild site won't even open using several of Adobe's PDF viewers.

I downloaded the specification from the OP's original link. Firefox saved it to my downloads folder where I was able to open it in Adobe Reader. After shutting down Adobe Reader I renamed the downloaded file and opened it again. I didn't experience any issues.

The file does indicate it's "Secured" but that didn't keep me from viewing it or renaming it.

Is it possible your download was corrupted in some way?

[thermistor-guy]

I just opened the datasheet on the Fairchild site, without a problem, using a Linux laptop (Mint 17.3 distro).

[KE5FX]

Anyway PDF is pretty much the bane of documentation these days.  Al semiconductor manufacturers should aspire to be "PDF free" in 5 years.  They did it for lead free / ROHS.  Now get rid of the bloody useless PDFs in favor of some actually machine readable data interchange and documentation format.

Like what?

I think you'll find quite a bit of resistance to the notion that .PDFs are the "bane of documentation."

[T3sl4co1l]

Can confirm, Chrome reader and Foxit Reader both work fine.  Text is selectable and readable.  (The bullet point characters on the left side of the title page show up as "?", but that may be a character set thing for me, I don't know.)

Tim

[capt bullshot]

Pretty much normal for most every datasheet. Just use a PDF reader that doesn't care about the protection flags.

[senso]

Using Evince, just because of those stupid you cant copy paste this text, that and adobe updates 3 times a day and just a massive security hole if installed in a pc..

[KE5FX]

Well, you know, we all want to change the world...

[Siwastaja]

evb149 is exactly right, but it seems totally impossible to me, given the current mentality in the software world.

It would be far too complex to be possible. Even the most trivial things escalate to complex catastrophes today.

OTOH, it could just actually happen one day, if a manufacturer accidently hired a bright, sane individual, and even more accidently let him/her do the job freely.

It could start from something really simple, like someone converting all the pin mappings, tables and curves to CSV files for some components, then uploading them to their web server and letting the web server generate the file listing page... Think about it! Parsing, utilizing, modifying these formats by writing small pieces of software or scripts would be utterly trivial to considerable percentage of EEs. Open source tools would start to appear. Later, industry mammoths would start to integrate the support into their $10000000000000000 tools, which we all use, because "the open source community" (whatever it means) is incapable of doing a big tool like a PCB design suite.

But as long as people dream about a "dataformat", it's not going to happen. Too complex, will be a battlefield about which industry giant makes the best vendor lockin; and even if it was open, designing a dataformat invites the wrong people to "design" it, and soon it will be a cloud xml applet snipplet portlet bubblet ascii-encoded-binary-in-xml-and-xml-inside-sql cloud big data and some more xml, designed by idiots who are not EEs and have no clue about the actual needs. I have seen too much of this. Very little sane information technology design in last 15 or so years.

Someone just has to start somewhere, and a good solution will spread.

[rs20]

I have had no trouble saving complete files like this.  I can understand manufacturers wanting to prevent edits on their datasheets, and I actually want it too.  Can you imaging the problems if a pranking script kiddy decided to do a little editing on pin assignments?  Or any of a number of other devilish things that I won't publish for fear of putting ideas in peoples heads.

Except, as already explained, this is classic DRM -- it is far more likely to annoy an average Joe EE than it is to hamper a dedicated hacker's efforts. Not to mention that it's not even real protection, literally just a "please disallowing copying" bit in the file which can trivially be ignored or flipped off.

We should just be pleased that semiconductor companies are smart enough to realise that only the very gentlest, lightest DRM makes sense; while music studies continue plodding along making life difficult for people who want to play their music in their car while absolutely, completely, spectacularly failing to put the slightest dent in piracy for the most obvious of reasons.

[julian1]

On debian, and pdfinfo says the following,

Code: [Select]

/Downloads$ pdfinfo FSUSB30.pdf | grep Enc
Encrypted:      yes (print:yes copy:no change:no addNotes:yes algorithm:AES-256)

It opens immediately in Firefox in the embedded viewer, or evince when downloaded, and pdf2ps and pdf2txt also work fine to generate postscript or dump the text.

I honestly don't think I've ever come across a manufacturer's pdf that doesn't open. I would blame the client.

[samnmax]

...
I mean why of why am I looking at some GRAPH in a PDF DOCUMENT that is maybe 2x2 inches in size on my 24in. monitor and using a REAL PHYSICAL RULER to INTERPOLATE ON THE SCREEN what the value of say voltage is at XX value of frequency or whatever from a BITMAP DIAGRAM?
...

I just wanted to point that there is an awesome tool to interpolate plots from an image, and obtain X and Y data from points manually sampled with the mouse. It can manage logarithmic axes.
WebPlotDigitizer: http://arohatgi.info/WebPlotDigitizer/app/

But yes, I agree with you that manufacturers should publish the data in a more computer-friendly way. Alas, I can only dream of them releasing proper SPICE and  RC network thermal models...

[free_electron]

evb149 is exactly right, but it seems totally impossible to me, given the current mentality in the software world.

there are 14 competing standards. lets make a uniform one. now there are 15 ....
i don't like this thing. let's fork it and make another flavor...

[Monkeh]

evb149 is exactly right, but it seems totally impossible to me, given the current mentality in the software world.

there are 14 competing standards. lets make a uniform one. now there are 15 ....
i don't like this thing. let's fork it and make another flavor...

Let's just stick with this thing we've been using for 20 years, nothing better can possibly be made.

[GreggD]

While I would not upload un-encrypted pdfs I do un-encrypt them for my own use. I use Elcomsoft Advanced PDF Password Recovery (APDFPR) unlocks  Adobe Acrobat PDF documents and removes editing, printing and copying restrictions instantly.

[NiHaoMike]

On debian, and pdfinfo says the following,

Code: [Select]

/Downloads$ pdfinfo FSUSB30.pdf | grep Enc
Encrypted:      yes (print:yes copy:no change:no addNotes:yes algorithm:AES-256)

It opens immediately in Firefox in the embedded viewer, or evince when downloaded, and pdf2ps and pdf2txt also work fine to generate postscript or dump the text.

I honestly don't think I've ever come across a manufacturer's pdf that doesn't open. I would blame the client.

Why would they use AES256 on a file that is meant to be viewable by anyone? It's the equivalent of delivering the documents in a good safe, but with the combination printed on the outside so that anyone can open it.

[edavid]

While I would not upload un-encrypted pdfs I do un-encrypt them for my own use. I use Elcomsoft Advanced PDF Password Recovery (APDFPR) unlocks  Adobe Acrobat PDF documents and removes editing, printing and copying restrictions instantly.

If you don't mind a command line, you can use QPDF, which is open source:

http://qpdf.sourceforge.net/

qpdf --decrypt input.pdf output.pdf

[rs20]

Why would they use AES256 on a file that is meant to be viewable by anyone? It's the equivalent of delivering the documents in a good safe, but with the combination printed on the outside so that anyone can open it.

I think the answer is: so that a 10-year old can't write a program to just flip bit 1 of byte 326 in the file to enable copying. But of course, a 10-year old can use qpdf, so indeed it is hard to argue that it's truly an effective strategy.