This might not be the best analogy...but to be fair, it's the only one I have at the moment.
Think about the age-old battle of mortals...the refillable mug argument.
Now for years, people asked "Does Disney really care if you bring an old mug back to be refilled?" Yeah, the signs to not do it are everywhere, but it's not enforced so does it matter, and they don't pay for the soda and yammer yammer yammer...
Only until recently did they start taking some serious steps to stop beverage thievery, with the RFID chips in the mugs. I don't know if this means a: WDW finally decided it was an issue or b: they always thought it was an issue but now there are affordable steps to combat it in a way that they don't lose money to do it. And who knows if this will work or they'll continue to do it. What we do know is, for year, it wasn't enough of a deal for them to, say, have cola patrol guards making sure you didn't use an old mug. If they saw one, maybe they'd say something, but they weren't looking...they weren't making a concerted effort, so it wasn't enough of a deal at the time...
NOW...
think about how many rooms are in WDW...
how many of them are WDW rooms? How many of them are DVC rooms?
And how many DVC rooms, on any given day, are being used by people renting DVC points?
Seriously.
I know it's more than one or two, but is it more than... a hundred? Less than a hundred? Are there that many renters? I know it's enough that "Dave" can make some coin facilitating the rentals, but enough for Disney to be plotting something to prevent renting from happening?
And for all the people operating under the assumption that a DVC renter is a Disney guest not renting a room, who's to say that that person would have gone to WDW were it not for renting points? Sure, WE all would, but that's not to say some of those renters would have gone elsewhere instead of to WDW had they not rented points.
I think Disney doesn't make a big deal about people renting points because then you start delving into people's personal affairs. Since they didn't restrict point rentals before, it would be potentially problematic to try to retroactively add that restriction, or to just add that restriction to new members going forward, thus affecting the golden calf that is DVC sales. There is a restriction about using DVC points for profit - I'd be far more worried about people who book trips on, say, Christmas Week using DVC points and then trying to auction the trip on ebay versus renters. And perhaps one day Disney might try an injunction to prevent "dave" or anyone else from making money off of those points. But ultimately, no matter how much money it may seem like to us, I think that sort of loss is planned for in their budgets, just like they won't tolerate stealing, but they nonetheless assume each store will experience some loss due to theft and incorporate that loss into the pricing of items...
Hey...wait a minute...didn't think about that until now. Maybe they don't care as much about it because they know it happens and "hide" that loss in the price of the rooms rented to everyone else, just as they do transportation and extra magic hours. It's not broken down on your bill, so you don't know it, but it's there all the same, just as your hotel bill compensates for the jerk who stole soda using an old mug, or swiped some nilla wafers out of the FW General store, or lifted some silverware out of a restaurant as a "souvenir." It's all rolled into something that someone else pays. And that's why there's not more of an effort to combat it.
