Hawke's Journal: WotC shoots foot, blames pirates.

Wizards of the Coast instructed sites legally selling their books in PDF format to stop. The offical reason given appears to be:

Unfortunately, due to recent findings of illegal copying and online distribution (piracy) of our products, Wizards of the Coast has decided to cease the sales of online PDFs. We are exploring other options for digital distribution of our content and as soon as we have any more information I'll get it to you.

Let me see if I understand this:

• Before WotC sold pdfs, people pirated pdfs of the books online.
• While WotC sold pdfs, people pirated pdfs online.
• But when WotC stops selling them, they'll stop pirating them online and start buying the hardback version?

How can this possibly have any effect other than to stop making money selling the legal version online?

In possibly related news, WotC has filed suit against eight of it's customers in Washington State. for sharing copies of their newest book.