I have a number of items that say this and I want to know if I remove the permanent effect will I still get the benefit. It adds quite a few buffs to my bar, and I don't want to have them up if not needed.
So is this the important part? - - Activating an item with one of these spells now casts a shadow spell named for the buff line. These shadow spells have no effects but are permanent duration and are intended to allow you to retain the use of these items as a means to reduce the impact of incoming dispel attacks.
You can click off the shadow buffs and it will have no impact on the actual effect. An easy way to check this is to take a expanding mind one, click it on and then click it off. You will notice in your stats that your mana pool does not change.