[Taylor514ce]

No, it isn't. DRM seeks to impose limits on the uses, copies, and/or distribution of (essentially) a file. It further seeks to impose these controls in a particularly stupid manner, from a security/programming standpoint.

Standard public-key encryption does not. You can distribute an encrypted file however you please, copy it however many times you like, and store it on any device you own. To read it, you have to decrypt it, and that decryption relies on an established shared key. That sounds awfully like a "transaction", to me, between a publisher and a consumer.

I don't want to buy crippled books that only work on certain devices. However, I support authors' and publishers' rights to earn a living from what they do, and part of that means finding some way of preventing me from giving away a thousand copies of a book.

Again, this is a problem that has already been addressed in the software industry, with good results, via digital signatures and public-key cryptography.