Vic Wertz on sharing Player's Guides:
I prefer PDFs. But, I would have never guessed that printing two or three copies of a free player's guide would break the rules.One answer: We don't *really* care if you print a copy of a free Player's Guide for each person in your gaming group. We *do* care if you try to print copies of everything else you've ever bought for them. Adding a lot of exceptions to the FAQ, though, actually makes it more complicated, which makes it less useful.
Another answer: Frankly, we'd prefer that your players each get their own account and download their own copy anyway. (It's free, after all.) That helps us have a better understanding of the scope and other characteristics of our audience, and it also lets us notify them directly if we update the file for some reason.
Odds are this has been answered somewhere else, but I'm safe to assume that we're okay if we print copies of the adventure path player guides for our players when we GM. I hate to tell someone to create a Paizo account on the spot just to download the guide before they can play.
Having said this, I hate people who are too cheap to pay $10 for the rules. That's cheaper than two extra value meals people!
We recognize the value of GMs sharing certain materials with their gaming groups—printing a few pages for them here and there is ok (but copying entire books or sharing your actual PDF with them is not).
...but when it comes to the free Player's Guides, we really would like your players to download them themselves. Having them create an account on paizo.com helps us have a better understanding of who our customers are and what they like, plus it lets us notify them directly if we update their materials. And it's free—that's infinitely cheaper than an extra value meal!
Basically: technically against the rules, pragmatically not a big deal. However, if someone is having a hard time making an account, that's definitely something Paizo would like to know about and fix, if they're given the opportunity!