Re: Russian book seller: international rights are negotiated separately, so the US publisher might have no bearing on Russian rights. You'd need to check with the author's agent. (That being said, the site still sounds fishy to me.)
Re: advertising in books: I used to think this was a great solution. Then I realized that the only ads I'd want to see in books are ads for other books, and if all books are supported entirely by advertising, there's no actual money going into the system, just circular loops of advertisement references.
Re: social DRM (your name embedded in the book): I think this is the best method. People who want to share books normally, e.g. loan to a friend, can do so, and every time the friend looks at the book, they'll remember whose it really is, and if they read it more than once they'll probably buy it. (I'd include an easy link to allow them to do that, right in the book, probably with some kind of discount program to the buyer, and/or a referral bonus to the person who loaned the book.) People who want to strip out the ID and blast the book all over creation are the same people who know how to crack existing DRM schemes, so no difference there. And the original owner of the book maintains the ability to read it on any device they like.
re: Amazon possibly allowing reselling of ebooks: that's the only good excuse I've heard so far for Amazon's proprietary DRM scheme and privacy invasive system. It's not a good enough excuse for me, but then again, I very rarely get rid of books I've read. I like to re-read. Allowing someone to return an ebook for credit, though, would make a lot of sense for Amazon, and I can see that they'd want some way to ensure that the book wasn't still on the device.
re: Microsoft: I don't think two wrongs make a right, and I don't think it's better to steal from the rich than the poor, but there is still the economic question of whether the users of illegal MS software would ever have paid MS, had the illegal sw not been available, and it is still the case that many studies support the theory that sharing content (music, sw, etc.) actually increases sales of that content in the long run. MS may have benefited at least in part from the piracy in the early days, and it might even be the case that if one were able to figure out who would have paid for genuine copies if no pirated copies were available, vs. who would never have heard of MS products back when they were young if pirated copies were not available, MS comes out ahead historically.
But that being said, now that they're the big dog on the block, they don't really get the benefit of the free advertising effect of sharing, and they've worked to wipe out the competition (see RealMedia for an example, or their infringements on their Java license), so I can see where they'd think they need to make everyone pay for their stuff now. Me, I'll stick with OpenOffice.