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Francesco: "I think what we can do is to support "less closed" formats (as in Alexander's example)"
MS .lit format is only less-closed because it was successfully hacked. Until then, it was one of the most closed formats out there (true Microsoft style). Not sure if you want to keep giving them money so that they come up with another, stronger DRM-protection.
Look, I understand that we SHOULD have the right to do whatever we want with our purchase, as long as we are not blatantly "publishing" the content ourselves to the internet masses (is it "right" to make 200 paper copies of a novel and hand it out to everyone at school without a penny to the author?). The problem is that many, MANY people have abused such an Honor system to the point that the publishers ahd to put in some control measures. This is not a new concept. Remember the old games that asked you to put in a code from a certain page of the manual before the game would start? Now we have games that require the CD/DVD to be inserted (even if the whole game is on the hardrive). DVDs have protection in them (that has been hacked, so they are now working on a new format, not surprisingly). Shareware doesn't allow you to distribute keys, and they often have license limitations on how many systems you can install on. iTunes music store only permits you to play purchased songs on alternate MP3 players if you burn than rip the music.
Ever since the digital age made it possible to make EXACT copies, as many as you want, and at no cost, then the whole "owning" concept became twisted as the honor system broke down. You can fight, spit, moan, rampage, and whine all you want, but the fact is there has to be a minimal amount of "control" over how easy it is to redistribute purchased media for the market to stand on its feet. There is a place for P2P, but it went too far and now we are paying for it. The only other way around it, is to mark up the price to compensate for lost sales due to P2P, but that only makes the price unreasonable so that even MORE people will opt to fire up Limewire instead. It's a nasty cycle, and only a little DRM can stop it for now.
If you can code a DRM that is transparent to the original user, allows him to use the data on any of his/her devices, yet prevents that document from being posted and downloaded millions of times by people around the world, than call up the Copyright office, you're going to be a millionaire.
Sorry for the bitter tone, but as a software developer, I see the DRM as being the necessary, yet evil spawn of a greedy publisher mixed with millions of bandwidth-jockeys that lack the honor system. The publishers are not the only ones at fault here.
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