Free Software activists ask Italian Authority for Protection of Personal Data to publish readable documents.

Free Software Foundation Europe and twenty Italian civil society organisations wrote a letter to the President of the Authority for the Protection of Personal Data, asking the agency to ensure that all documents published on its website can be read and used with Free Software programs.

On its website, the agency had offered a PDF document to report data breaches. Although most versions of the PDF file format are Open Standards, this form could only be filled in using a particular proprietary PDF reader.

"This is an obstacle to the users' freedom," says Alessandro Polvani, who coordinates FSFE's activities in Italy. "Public authorities need to make sure that their documents are accessible to everyone. No citizen should have to use proprietary software in order to talk to the public sector."

Beyond the PDFreaders campaign

In FSFE's PDFreaders campaign, volunteers across Europe work to have advertisements for proprietary PDF readers removed from public-sector websites. People in Italy are among the most active participants in the campaign. They have so far reported 488 advertisements, of which almost half (49%) were fixed in response to letters by citizens.

Contact

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Further information

Navigazione

• PDFReaders campaign page

  Find out what we already did, and how you can contribute, to the PDFReaders campaign.

• List of signalled institutions

  Find out which Public institutions were signalled in your country.

• Free PDF Readers list

  The pdfreaders.org website collects a list of all free PDF readers, with suggestions to download them, according the technical features of your system.

• The Petition

  Petition to remove advertisements to proprietary software from public institutions websites.

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