That's not how the legal system works. Lawsuits aren't some magical thing that just happen and bankrupt people irrespective of the existence of something over which to sue.
Well, yes and no.
They certainly
could threaten to take them to court. And, that threat might be enough to cow the pdf distributors into obeying. Heck, the distributors could have threatened to sue over breach of contract and WOTC could have simply told them to go ahead with the knowledge that they could tie things up in court for years and the complainants would go bankrupt long before any settlement was reached.
I'm not saying that either scenario happened, but, it certainly could. It really depends on whether or not the distributors wanted to burn bridges with WOTC and go public.
All this aside, I'm usually a huge apologist for WOTC. I know that. However, even I'm baffled by this. This is just out and out stupid on the face.
As a questions, could this be part of a package of moves in the face of the court cases against the pirates? Could WOTC be collecting information, or perhaps building some sort of case against the pirates in this move. I'm not really sure how, but, could the two be linked?
As in, WOTC says they are going to sue X for piracy. They then pull all their pdf's as part of that suit saying that the piracy of X is the reason for the move and thus X should be responsible for the loss of revenue that they could have had from pdf's?
Hey, this is tinfoil hat time. I have no idea. I'm just wildly speculating. Is this possible?
