Academia is probably keeping quiet since most of EE, CS, CE is heavily dependent on IEEE publications for reputation and career advancement and paper-reputation.
There would be complaints somewhere you can link to. I have a collection of over 15,000 papers. Many I got off of IEEE/ACM. However, many others I got by typing the name into Google and/or CiteSeerx to find same file. I still can usually get any file I think of and many are still on academics sites. Those are high-profile, too.
So, where's your evidence that IEEE can or is forcing PDF's off the net?
So, where's your evidence that IEEE can or is forcing PDF's off the net?