[Taylor514ce]

Conceded. Realize, though, (read Peter's posts in this thread), that publishers simply will not produce e-books without some system in place, even though any system "fails", technically, to prevent privacy.

It's a classic dilemma:

Publisher Lemma 1: consumers must be able to read a copy of the book.
Publisher Lemma 2: consumers must not be able to produce a readable copy of the copy of the book.

DRM is all smoke-and-mirrors meant to hide the dilemma.

Publishers have to eliminate one of the lemmas. They could eliminate the first, and simply not produce e-books. Or, they can attempt to mitigate the second, by focusing on producing books keyed to individual users, while full-well recognizing that people can and will still produce copies. It's better than no security at all, and it's better than keying books to devices. Keying to the user mimics what occurs with paper books. Keying to devices does not, and provides incentive to remove DRM.

Keying to the person provides the same illusion of security to the publisher, and removes the honest user's incentive for bypassing that security.