I think that's unnecessarily harsh. Someone can still cut-and-paste the text (and "Select All", "Copy", "Paste" isn't terribly time-consuming), so it isn't like any "real" protection is afforded. I would consider it a strech to say that protection is the primary goal an agency has when placing a PDF online. Portability and print-formating (i.e. making sure two pages STAYS two pages) are of more importance.

It would be more useful (to the questioner) to say that Adobe protects PDF text reading-methods, and that no modules exist to do so (that can be distributed).