> One way is to print to postscript and convert back to pdf, but then you can't copy text from it.

If you use the following GhostScript command it's still possible to select the text in the unprotected PDF.

    "%ProgramFiles%\gs\gs9.22\bin\gswin64c.exe" -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sFONTPATH=%windir%/fonts;xfonts;. -sPDFPassword= -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -dPassThroughJPEGImages=true -sOutputFile=Unprotected.pdf Protected.pdf