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Liviu, I do think there's a reason to bother... there are a lot of positive aspects of e-books, their portability, their flexibility, their environmental friendliness, and their lower production cost, that make them a desirable product. We just need a publishing model that suits those positive aspects... or, put another way, doesn't outweigh them to the extent that nobody wants e-books.
Greg, although e-books can probably be considered a bit like software, and a bit like digital music, I think they will earn their own definition and method of use, and that may not preclude being resellable. However, I think we have a long way to go before we get there... digital music's and software's selling/reselling model took years to settle down, and e-books probably will, too.
Maybe we're all paying too much attention to the meticulous details, and need to step back and get a better look at the overall picture. We have a digital file, and the point here is to package it in such a way as to make people want to buy it, not bother to steal it, and not detract from their enjoying it.
Take my publishing method (no DRM, low-cost, multiple formats, semi-entertaining website) as example: It seems to work fine... but a major variable is that I am not widely known, so the cross-section of the population that knows about me is small. If we theorized that I became famous tomorrow, and millions of people started coming to my site to buy e-books, would my model still work? Would I get more sales, massive pirating, or a modicum of both? What should I alter to deal with such a situation?
Then, other publishing methods, such as Baen's, or Harlequin's, both of which have larger e-book customer bases: Do their models need to be tweaked to make them more palatable? To make them palatable to the mainstream? Is there a reason the mainstream couldn't handle their system? Or are they really fine as-is?
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