Viral marketing: the truth behind the .wwf format

What really baffled me the last few weeks is why the WWF insisted on using their driver, although I demonstrated more than once that print-disabled PDF's can serve the same purpose. Why would they alienate the paper industry when there are more than enough really environmentally dangerous industries around. Why would they lie about its effects on rain forests - since most paper comes from tree farms.

Well, it became clear to me when I watched this video:



The driver does not just disable printing it also adds an extra page to the end of the document. They say it's there "just to inform the receiver", but I don't buy it. Marketing, that's what it is really all about. Every time you make and spread a .wwf file, you are making publicity for the WWF. Bottomline.

It gives me an eery feeling. Does it just "phone home" in order to check for "updates" or does it report how many digital advertisements have been spread the last week? It makes you wonder..

Update: According to GizMag the WWF has admitted it is all about viral marketing:

WWF Germany says that the campaign is meant to be viral and an extra page tagged onto each new format document will help introduce new users to the campaign and encourage awareness about how we use paper in our digital lives. If you don't want this extra page added to catalogs, official documents, CV's and so on then you'll need to choose another method of saving files and run the risk that such things may end up in a print queue somewhere.

This also proves the WWF is not too shy to bluntly lie. As I have demonstrated numerous times it is perfectly feasible to create a PDF that cannot be printed.

Update: It's not the first time WWF has launched a disastrous campaign. Remember this beauty?

How to create a .wwf file (without that driver)

OpenOffice.org
Anyone with OpenOffice.org can make .wwf files without any additional software. Simply choose: File/Export as PDF. Then turn to the Security tab. Fill in a "permissions" password and disable printing:



Generate your file as usual. Finally, rename it to .wwf.

Windows
You can make .wwf files by installing the PDF toolkit. Generate your PDF file as usual. Then open a DOS window and issue:

pdftk myfile.pdf output myfile.wwf owner_pw secret allow CopyContents

For those who don't like to use the CLI, you can download my .wwf toolkit. The installation manual is here.

Linux
You can make .wwf files by installing the PDF toolkit, but note that it is included in most distributions as well (pdftk). Generate your PDF file as usual. Then open a console and issue:

pdftk myfile.pdf output myfile.wwf owner_pw secret allow CopyContents

For those who don't like to use the CLI, you can download my .wwf toolkit.

OS/X 10.6 and above
You can make .wwf files by installing the PDF toolkit. Generate your PDF file as usual. Then open a console and issue:

pdftk myfile.pdf output myfile.wwf owner_pw secret allow CopyContents

There have also been unconfirmed reports that you can create an "unprintable" PDF file by using the standard OS/X PDF printer and simply change the security settings. Makes you wonder why the WWF brought out an OS/X version in the first place..

The .wwf toolkit can probably be ported to OS/X as well. If you want to help, please leave a message in the comments.

How to print (or unlock) a .wwf file

Online
You can unlock your .wwf files here (up to 5 MB) or here (up to 95 MB). This one is even dedicated to .wwf files, which is hilarious!

Windows
Install Ghostscript on Windows and create this simple batchfile:

set ttt=%1
set tt=%ttt:~0,-4%
gswin32c -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sFONTPATH=%windir%/fonts;xfonts;. -sPDFPassword= -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -dPassThroughJPEGImages=true -sOutputFile="%tt%_noPW.pdf" "%1"

Save it as crackwwf.bat. Now open a DOS window and issue:

crackwwf protected.wwf

Unconfirmed, but it makes sense. Please put any corrections in the comments. For those who don't like to use the CLI, you can download my .wwf toolkit. The installation manual is here.

If you just want to print a .wwf you have to install GSview as well. Start it, load your .wwf file and simply print it.

Linux
Install Ghostscript and poppler-tools which most distributions carry. Then issue:

pdftops Presseinfo_SAVE_AS_WWF_-_SAVE_A_TREE.wwf crack.ps
ps2pdf crack.ps crack.pdf

You can also download my .wwf toolkit, which comes with a GUI. If you open it with KGhostview you can print it without any conversion at all:



OS/X
The .wwf toolkit can probably be ported to OS/X as well. If you want to help, please leave a message in the comments.