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So my printer at home is on the fritz, and I have a PDF I need printed. I tried using Kinko/FedEx online printing, just to have it printed at my local store and go pick it up. But the store clerk called me up and said they could not print it up without Paizo's express written permission. I told him I was not selling it, I just needed it to play the game. I told him that this is what the PDFs are for. He said it was because Kinko/FedEx would make a profit off of it, and thus breaks the copyright codes and all that. I had not thought of that. I was just wondering if I was really about to break some major rules and get in trouble myself or was the clerk being overly cautious. I have gone there and made photocopies of handouts from books for the players, when I have been low on ink or wanted a nicer color copy to give my players. They made a profit on that, should I not have done that either. I don't know if I just opened a can of worms or not, I know people share their watermarked PDFs online and that is a major no no. But I thought the point of having a file to print from was so that I could print it up as often as I want. If I involve a place like Kinko/FedEx does then become a crime?
I would assume that PDFs like this would be the same as professional photographs. I worked in a photo lab for a while and making copies of professional photos was a major copyright violation. It put us at risk as well as the customer. If a customer made their own copy on a do-it-yourself printer in the lab, we had to confiscate it. We had to carefully check every photo that even looked professional. People would sometimes photoshop or crop off the photographers mark, but they couldn't fix the eyes. The double lights in the eyes from the photographers flashes were always a dead giveaway. With professional photos you can make as many copies as you want in your own home on your own printer for your own use, but you can't take them somewhere and have them made. From the photo lab's standpoint, if they make copies of professional photos they are violating copyright laws by taking money away from the professional who made the copyrighted work. If you want professional copies made, you are supposed to go back to the photographer. Making photocopies of handouts from books I believe is covered under "fair use" laws since you are only copying a small portion of the book with no intent to make any kind of gain from it.
Paizo staff have stated on the messageboards in the past that having a single copy of a PDF printed for personal use is something they're absolutely okay with.
People have also run into the same refusal from Kinko's that you have, resulting from a healthy caution of running foul of copyright laws. They have showed the statements from Paizo staff to their local Kinko's employees as permission to print the PDF, but I'm not sure they've met with unqualified success.
EDIT: Here is express, written permission from Paizo you can show them.
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That seems fair enough. But what about the character sheet, something that you would want to print over and over. This would be pricy at home. If can't send something like that out it makes a PDF almost pointless. And my local game stores don't always have copies on hand. I don't want to take money from anyone who works for it. But My friends and I do want to be able to make full use of what we pay for.
Here is a relevant thread, as well.
Don't the character sheets have explicit wording on them that you can make as many copies as you like for personal use? Most things like that do.
EDIT:
© 2009 Paizo Publishing, LLC. Permission granted to photocopy for personal use only.
As long as you're using the official CS from the resources page you should be good to go.