Hi Russell,
Thank you for interested in Edocman, regarding to your questions. I would like to answer as below:
1. Edocman allow user to upload documents at front-end.
2. Edocman inherits Joomla ACL feature, so it's very easy to manage the access to specific PDF files at Back-end side.
3. Edocman has the power security function, so normal user can't access to document directly if they don't have permission.
Thanks
Dam