Totally different idea: Get a ext2 filesystem driver for Windows. AFAIK, there are some free (read-only) ones out there.

If you use Reiserfs or xfs you've got a problem though. Ext3 is ok, because as long as it's read-only, it's the same as ext2.

Of course, like the ntfs driver for Linux, the ext2 driver for Windows bypasses the permissions