Because you did not purchase the content. You purchased the content in a specific format. If you wanted that content in a different format then you should have purchased it in a different format. And just because the file type for the format that you want is not available is not, imo, sufficient to justify theft in that specific file type.
Ah, but here's the question: when one buys, say, a book is one purchasing the content or the format?
Given various rulings over the years allowing personal-use format conversion of content one already owns (starting with making it legal to make a personal-use cassette tape of a legally-owned record album so you could play it in your car, and going on from there), it seems it's in fact the content that one is purchasing.
And if that's the case, and one already legally owns the content in one format, how is it 'stealing' to convert it for your own use to another format which may sometimes be more useful?
For example, I own just about all the 1e material that's out there; multiple copies, in some cases. I've taken all the 1e spells - content I already own, note - and put them online myself, editing and tweaking as I went as well as adding in some others we'd invented ourselves, so they'd work for my game and to make future editing much easier. If by your definition that's theft then you're about 40 years behind the times...if not 50.
Yes, case law says you can convert for your own use. So if you want a pdf, buy the content and convert to pdf yourself.
In effect that's what he's doing, only he's getting someone else to do the actual conversion for him.
I don't see how the grimoire provides any type of legal service under fair use. It makes no attempt to control the distribution of its illegal content to only those who has legal fair use of such content. It doesn't even go through the comical steps of having a user claim they have the products.
Yes, this is more of an issue. It's providing a legal service - format conversion - for those who own the content but has no method in place to check for that ownership before doing so.
All right, so you are taking the word theft and giving it a specific legal definition, which may or may not be legally accurate. I'm not arguing legal definitions, never have. You have. A common definition of theft is; "theft is the taking of another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent."
Taking someone written words, duplicating it, and distributing it without the author's/creator's permission is theft. Legally or not, morally it is theft/plagiarism/wrong. Put forth another word if you wish, one with accurate common understanding and connotations and I will use it.
Except that simple format conversion has been defined as not-theft provided you already own the product.
Not that everyone seems to believe this. I'm in an amateur band, we write and record loads of original music but we have to do any copying of said music via analog hookup, as the equipment we have in our studio won't allow digital transfer - the manufacturer's assumption being that any copying violates copyright even when we own the flippin' copyright! (what the manufacturer really wants is for people like us to buy the "studio use" version of the hardware for six times the price; it's basically the same hardware with the copy-protection stripped out - bugger that.)