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What kind of shenanigans is the IT guy for the Belgian House of Representives using to enshitify their PDF links? (www.lachambre.be)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/Belgium
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The linked page has 2 “PDF” docs. But they are not really PDFs. If you wget them, they are HTML with javascript embedded.

So we can no longer simply download a PDF anymore. Apparently we must run a JavaScript application to get the PDF in a browser tab, then use pdf.js to save it. WTF? This breaks my script (which stores the URL as metadata on every PDF I fetch).

Other sites do this too. I’ve seen websites for restaurants pull this shit with their menus.

What’s the point?

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[–] [S] 3 points 6 months ago

Thanks for the insight. Apparently Mozilla is okay with this.

I suspect it violates open data law to impose JS execution as a precondition to reaching public documents.

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