I don't think you'll ever find the motor company going that route...providing manuals in electronic form is an easy set up for pirating. .. And as tight as the Motor Company is, no way they will ever take that chance
Considering how the management of Harley is, I think you're right. But it is kind of strange how other manufacturer's don't seem to have a big problem with selling their manuals in digital formats to anyone with the money to buy them. For instance, I can buy digital manuals for my Fords from the Ford authorized source, Helm Inc., all day long. They aren't cheap, but if you bought the paper version that wouldn't be cheap either. Somehow the sharing or piracy thing doesn't seem to worry Ford or the many other companies that sell their manuals through Helm.
btw, I think what a lot of the folks are selling online for Harley's is not the official stuff Harley has on their network for the dealers, but in fact are scans of disassembled paper manuals that have been put into pdf form. I wonder if they are legal licensed copies, or just pirated copies of copyrighted material?
Ideally the best solution would be a license that allows you to access the online manuals the dealerships use. Those are continuously updated, unlike those scanned copies in pdf form. I've seen that option for the auto folks, haven't seen it so far for Harley. Maybe one of you guys with some inside contacts could suggest that idea to Harley as another possible profit center. They could always set it up as read only so folks couldn't download and save the entire thing.
Jerry