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I see the problem from a conflicted POV. As a writer, you're not getting paid just for some non-tangible thing, you're also getting paid for the time you spend, often times above and beyond a paying job. I just finished a book; I write fast and it took me 30+ hours to write it and at least that long to edit. Many people take three or four times that long, 240+ hours or more. Thats six weeks of a full-time job, and very few of us actually work 8 solid hours...we all have down-time in the form of interruptions...which we have to schedule in for writing. Figure another 40 hours, because its almost not possible to write without interruption. Figure 2 months for a book, sometimes less, usually more. Most writers usually don't make a living off writing. Standard royalties used to be 6%, with a bum up to 8% after 150,000 copies. figure $.45 for each book. 45,000 bucks for 100k books. Keep in mind that you may not reach that many books for 10 years, and your advance (against ryalties) may be 4 grand.
The reason I say that is that grey market eBooks don't really hurt publishers as much as they hurt authors. I'm 100% behind redoing drm so its sensible but I can never support the wholesale theft of books. Even Linus Torvold has a paying job. I've never seen a post on here saying "I just jack them all, arrrrrr," but I know it happens. Ideally everything would handle it like the Zune I think...Free to loan out but it expires. To make it portable they'd end up having to neuter it...but you can't make things foolproof...theres too many talented fools. It would keep the punters in line anyway. That's about all you can hope for; Pirates will steel it no matter what, and DRM shouldn't impact usability. That's my moral viewpoint regarding copyrights.
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