Permissions

An encrypted PDF may refuse printing, copying, changing, or annotating it. The state’s permissions reports what it permits, and is null while it loads:

Field
print, printHighQuality	Printing, and printing at full quality.
modify, assemble	Changing the document, and inserting, rotating, or deleting pages.
copy, copyForAccessibility	Copying text, and extracting it for assistive technology.
annotate, fillForms	Adding or changing annotations, and filling in form fields.
restricted	True when any of the others is false.

Documents that are not encrypted permit everything.

Following them

The viewer only reports permissions unless enforcePermissions: true, as in pdf.js. Then:

• without copy, the text cannot be selected or copied, though assistive technology and getText() still read it;
• without print, print() fails;
• without annotate, annotationEditing stays off;
• form fields can be filled in with fillForms or annotate.

Permissions are advisory: a document that opens can be read whole by any program that ignores them, so they protect nothing an application must keep secret.