Word protection hacked?

Steve Rubel links to this post, which purports to explain how to get past password protection in a Word document. As Steve said in a caveat:

This post has been updated to imply this is a developing story. It's unclear what this hack exactly does - unlock the read function, the editing function - as commenters on the post have noted

If true - for any kind of password protected Word doc - then it does demonstrate a problem with the ability to export out to straight textual formats. Perhaps protected documents should not allow themselves to be saved into those kinds of easily "hacked" formats?