A story covered in Slashdot refers to the eventual judgment (naturally) for the plaintiff – Wizards of the Coast – against defendant and popular ebook site Scribd. The charge was allowing a user to upload a copyrighted Dungeons & Dragons ebook, which was downloaded 2,600 times before Scribd pulled it from the site.

Wizards was awarded $125,000, which – par for course – was exorbitant considering that Scribd made no money from the ebook.

What’s worth noting here is that companies making ebooks should use the built-in abilities to market ebooks better than regular books to advertisers. Then, the economic backlash of the book being shared is largely or completely mitigated.

For example, there are various educational reports on all manner of subjects – from using Google AdSense to writing a killer blog. They make their money off affiliate marketing embedded in the links in the PDF, not off the sale of the report. Sure, these reports bear a price tag, but they are rife on p2p sites, and have long thrived without backlash.

Why? Because the bulk of their moneymaking model is about getting eyes on the product, not on the money generated from sales.

So couldn’t PDFs of WotC content operate in the same way? Instead, they waste time and effort trying to track down and sue companies such as Scribd for a consequence they didn’t intend.That’s not to say that Scribd shouldn’t be responsible for whatever is on their servers and site; it’s just a pretty poor model when the only way you’re going to address the inevitability of piracy is to file lawsuit after lawsuit. Instead, how about coming out with more innovative ways of selling your products?

After all, it’s very arguable that whoever would download an ebook of D&D is likely not going to and never would have bought the paper product. So how do you make money off of such potential customers? Perhaps in-book adverts aren’t the only answer, but I can tell you what certainly isn’t the answer: suing everyone and making yourself look like jerks.