LOW-FIDELITY DOCUMENT RENDERING

Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, for printing an electronic document. In one aspect, a method includes receiving an electronic document and usage rights, the usage rights permitting uses of the document including a low-fidelity print use; rendering the document in response to a print request by creating a low-fidelity bitmap for each page of the document in accordance with the usage rights; and printing the low-fidelity bitmaps to an output device, whereby the print output is a low fidelity rendering of the document. Particular embodiments can include one or more of the following features. The document is rendered at a pre-determined resolution specified in the usage rights. The pre-determined resolution is lower than a minimum required by an optical character recognition (OCR) system. The document is rendered at a pre-determined color fidelity specified in the usage rights. The pre-determined color fidelity is a 2-bit grayscale. The print output is produced on a piece of paper, on film, or on a display screen.