Mastering Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0

11.3. Permission Levels

Permission levels enable you to assign a set of permissions to users and SharePoint groups so that they can perform specific actions or tasks on your site. Most permission levels (and SharePoint groups for that matter) are role related, aligning the set of permissions with a task that must be performed. With permission levels, you can control which permissions are granted to users and SharePoint groups on your site. For example, by default, the Read permission level includes the View Items, Open Items, View Pages, and View Versions permissions (among others), all of which are needed to read documents, items, and pages on a SharePoint site.

The following permission levels are provided by default: Full Control, Design, ...