What is it about owning the D&D franchise that makes a gaming company stupid?

[professionalhenchman]

So, after hearing about the latest snafu involving Wizards of the Coast deciding to pull from sale all the pdf copies of all their books due to concerns about piracy, I find myself wondering what it is about owning D&D that makes a company seem to try to go out of their way to annoy their customers.  WotC has pulled a number of PR blunders over the last few months, and this one is as big as it is among players because they've squandered all their trust - if they didn't have a history of delivering promised new online content half-assed and behind schedule, people would be fine with their promises of a rerelease of digitized content in a new format coming when they can figure out a good DRM scheme (never mind that DRM's a dumb idea in the first place).  The way they should have handled this one is to have the new setup ready before pulling the plug on the old one, but they don't seem competent enough for that.  They're still not as bad at dealing with customers as TSR was when they were known as They Sue Regularly, but they don't seem far off.
Overall, I can't say I care much - I'm indifferent to 4e, and don't otherwise buy any of their products these days, though if I'd known they were selling pdfs of 1st and 2nd ed stuff, I might have gone shopping at some point.  I'll just be curious to watch over the next few years to see if we get another company ending up taking over the brand and see if they can manage any better at customer interaction.