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Originally Posted by mr ploppy
Yes. mp3 piracy created a demand for dedicated hardware mp3 players, which made those players a lot cheaper to buy, which created a demand for legitimate mp3 sales, which lead to a massive increase in music industry profits.
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One of the reasons for the way things turned out for music industry was absolute ease of ripping CD's and conversion to the mp3 format. It was straightforward, everybody could do it within half an hour. All you needed was an access to computer with CD reader, the source CD, and access to the net. Which turned out to be within the reach of practically everybody at the time when mp3 piracy exploded and became an issue.
Publishing industry, however, now faces a substantially different situation. Yes, one could scan pbook, proofread it and and upload it to the net. The process, however, is prohibitively complex for the average person and the quality of end result depends almost completely on the amount of human work that went into proofreading.
For the blockbuster editions, pbook piracy is an issue, the pbooks WILL be pirated, but those books sell anyway.
For a smaller publishing projects, it is highly likely that demand is small enough that obstacle (amount of work needed to pirate a pbook) is effective.
So we come to the other and newly emerging source of material, DRMed (and then DRM is stripped) ebooks. "DRM liberation" is even quicker and simpler than it was with CD ripping. ANY electronic edition is in danger of this scenario, blockbusters and smaller editions alike.
So what is the first reaction of the publishing industry? Hell, cut the second supply, resist by any means and as long as it is humanely possible!
It is logical. It also doesn't work on the long run, the transition to digital content and delivery is inevitable.