Digital rights management for PDFs, typically, presents three problems:

 *  First, a segment of the population will go to their graves thinking it's a dirty word, thanks in part to poorly executed schemes as the technology evolved.

 * Second, managing rights of PDFs can be expensive: Adobe's LiveCycle solution involves a six-figure server license and who knows how much more in training, development and support.

 * Third, requiring end-users to keep track of plug-ins, passwords, and in some cases, extra apps just to read a PDF can be a sales barrier for publishers of DRM'd content.

 "Security and usability tend to be at odds with one another," says Peter Nieforth of Vancouver-based DRM vendor Vitrium. "Therefore, the more secure you make something the less usable it becomes."

 His company has a new idea: Taking document DRM to the masses via software-as-a-service (SaaS) with ProtectedPDF. Built on Microsoft SharePoint, ProtectedPDF works with Acrobat Reader. That's key to the marketability and usability of the service, Nieforth says, who uses that point as the main differentiator between his company's DRM and that of competitors such as LockLizard, which requires a proprietary browser to view documents using that scheme and FileOpen, which requires a plug-in download.

ProtectedPDF obscures content, instead of encrypting it, the distinction being there's not even a plug-in required for the end-users. In the DRM scheme, owners control the rights to be managed, which can include controlling how long a document can remain unlocked before it locks itself—if ever—when rights expire, and whether a document can be printed, copied, and otherwise modified.

It also can provide tracking and analytics, reporting who's reading a document, when. Because Vitrium's servers control the rights, document owners can modify rights even after a customer or colleague has downloaded it.

The company will be announcing version 2.0 on May 6, with many user-requested features—including bulk uploading and downloading—added to the 1.0 small business edition that came out earlier this year.

Another major new feature will be telephone support for opening documents. While it is a little-used facet of the service, some end-users still can't get online when they need to open their PDFs, whether they're in a wi-fi dead spot or don't have access to a wired Internet connection.

Right now, ProtectedPDF is getting traction among e-book and niche newsletter publishers, market research firms, and in the educational market, Nieforth says. The company has seen interest from legal and manufacturing sectors as well as word gets out.

Small-business plans starting at $100/month for small companies who want their reports and other sensitive documents managed but can't afford Battleship LiveCycle. Pricing scales up according to the number of documents and users involved.

Larger customers—such as the University of Phoenix, which uses ProtectedPDF for its electronic editions of textbooks—can upgrade to the Enterprise Edition, a server product.