"could not be copied because you do not have permission to see its contents."

There is nothing wrong with the permissions of the file you want to put in your iOS device. The problem is tha the iOS device itself is locked. Unlock it so that you can see the home screen and try to move the file using itunes again. Voila!

Imagine if the error mesage in iTunes told the user there was such a simple solution. For example, if it said:

"__YourFile__ could not be copied because you do not have permission to see its contents. You probably can solve this by unlocking your iPhone."

Then people could just continue with what they are trying to do, rather than having to do a search here or on Google to find out what that unhelpful error message meant. Come on, Apple!

Here here. Apple, are you paying attention? I just wasted an hour of my life trying to work this out....

Same problem

I resolved it with Disk Utility

Repair Disk Permissions

Unbelievable. I just encountered this message, and spent 15 minutes diddling around with file permissions, quitting apps and various other silly things until I found this page. As Krioni points out, a simple additional sentence would avoid a lot of wasted time and frustration. That's the kind of useless error message I would expect from Microsoft.

Thank you! After 30 minutes of fumbling around with file permissions, I simply unlocked the ipad connected to the computer. Hilarious.

Ditto here, I had been messing with this issue for a couple days before discovering this post. I have uninstalled and reinstalled applications and finally purchased new applications thinking the old ones had a bug in them. Today, my new, brand new superpowerful expensive pro file explorer app did the same thing and I was like, "Oh h.e.l.l. no" Then I did this search again and finally found this post. I thought, "No way, could the solution be that simple..." Voila, there it was... Apple, please create a more descriptive error message...

Absolutely idiotic. I searched almost immediately, so didn't have the same headaches others did. But this has never happened before doing the same activity. Great 'idea' Apple.

Why is it that this message isn't even the first message that comes up? I HATE messing around with permissions, which is what I've been doing all damned day.

I'd expect that...from Denny's, but not here!"

wow, one of the lamest bugs ever, thanks for the simple solution

I am having this issue, but for carts of 30 iPads. What if I don't want to unlock each device, but I need the files transferred? Does anyone know if this is possible?