Performance counter permissions: admin not required?

Can anyone please clarify for me exactly what permissions are required to read and write to the performance counters? I don't see that I need any special permissions to read / write the performance counters, and this is contrary to most of the resources I have found.

The training I took, as well as most of the resources on the web, indicates that admin permissions are required to manage performance counters (create, delete), and read / write requires administration or membership in the local performance monitor user group. I checked the first one, but as far as read / write, I have no problem with this on my Win8.1 machine as a non-admin user. I can read performances using perfmon, PowerShell and the .NET API and write to custom punched counters using the .NET API, all as non-admin.

Has this changed in OS versions? Or perhaps something in my corporate domain policy allows this?