I don't know who's positions you are arguing against but they aren't mine. Nobody here is asking for free PDFs. It was pointed out other publishers give them out for free with a purchase, or at the very least make them available. Simply to point out the ease and ubiquity of their distribution and availability, making WOTC's position the clear outlier.
Exactly. Something (a PDF) for nothing (a price you paid for something else).
Yes, other companies give free PDFs.
But by that logic, since I get a toy free with my Happy Meal at McDonalds therefore I should get a free toy at every restaurant I go to.
Free PDFs are by no means an industry standard and
four of the top five all five of the top RPGs in the fall of 2019 require PDFs as a second purchase (
edit: unsure of the fifth. Thought it was free PDFs, but that was only for pre-orders), and two have no PDFs at all. (One has no electronic book access.)
Really, $20-$30 PDFs are probably the standard. But that's the price point for publishers several orders of magnitude smaller than D&D.
Free PDFs tends to be found with small publishers whose products are best purchased from their online store or can respond to every email. Books you
can't buy in a chain book store. Comparing the small, micro RPG found only online or hobby bookstores with D&D is applies and oranges. Heck, the scale is so different it's apple pie and oranges.
Expecting a free electronic copy of a D&D book with purchase is like expecting a free PDF of
Order of the Pheonix when you buy that Harry Potter book.
But that's irrelevant because, as has been said elsewhere, even if WotC wanted to, it's almost six years to late to give free PDFs with purchase and no way to provide that now without upsetting the million people who already purchased the book.