[CommanderROR]

@SpiderMatt

Everything you say about the EU and their involvement is true..or rahter, it would be true in an ideal world.
We live in a real world however, and if you don't come donw heavy on the companies AND the people about just about everything, then what you get is madness and mayhem. If it were up tot eh companies, then we would have a few big Goliath companies that control the market. They would make the prices and they would decide what people want and what not. If it were up to the food companies, then we would all be eating stuff that causes cancer and whatnot until we die, even if they know what's in their products.
Have you ever seen a big boos of some cigarette company smoking? Well, they know (and have always known) that smoking kills you, but they still want us all to smoke. If Crack were legal, do you think anyone would hesitate? Do you think any businessman would think twice about selling Cocaine? They would probably even sell it to babies, advertising it as "Ideal method to make sure your kid never cries and is always happy" or something like that...

Of course, these are extreme examples, but I don't think they are untrue. The whole economy is a delicate balance between the companies wanting to make as much profit as they can and the governments making sure that nobody get's ripped off, addicted, poisoned or whatever...and that is the reason why we have too many laws...every loophole is immediately exploited, that means more laws to close the loopholes and so on...

Now let's look at your argument that consumers have a choice...

To have a choice, you need to HAVE choices available (how much choice do you have if there is just ONE company that you can buy your food from?) and of course you have to know a few things. Left to our own devices, we would probably always buy the product that looked like it gives the best value for our money. Now, without government control, you would not be able to read on the side of every food-product what it contains. Without government control, you would never know anything about the stuff you buy. How about poisonous children's toys from China? Do you think the companies would have changed anything if some EU import law did not prohibit certain substances, if there were no labs that check for dangerous chemicals in improted goods?

Now, let's go back to DRM. Paper-Books can't really be DRM protected, and this is something that bothers publishers no end. There were actually attempts at DRM in paper books long ago, where there was a little curse written in the book that was supposed to do terrible things to you if you handed the book on or something...I think I read that on mobileread some time ago...
Now, when left to their own devices, publishers would try their best to tie you to a certain format, a certain device and of course make sure that you never own anything you buy. What can a consumer do about that? He can stop buying ebooks...that's no problem for the publisher, because most publishers don't want ebooks to succeed anyway. Ebooks are convenient for consumers, because they do not take up physical space, a rare commodoty these days, and they don't eat resources, at least not that much...for publishers it's easy to provide ebooks, since the books usually exist in digital form anyway and are then printed to paper. And it's cheap too, but it more or leass makes publishers irrelevant...so they drag their feet every step of the way, claiming technical problems, security and piracy concerns and format indecision...

Now, if the EU encourages, and later perhaps forces a generic, interoperable DRM for music, vids and later also books, then that will be one step forward and it will be one that publisher are sure to fight till the end...