ePub supporters would beg to disagree. At any rate, the episode was talking about industry wide standards. Some of those standards we take for granted these days (like weights and measures), but I thought that the shipping container was interesting because the benefits were quantifiable and quite dramatic. Incidentally, the creator of shipping containers allowed competitors to use the corner pieces that he had patented just to encourage efficiency: prior to that the cranes at ports had to be fitted for each type of shipping container. After releasing the standard for use by competitors, operations at ports could be made even more efficient.

In a way, publishers could see similar benefits if they standardized upon a format for their publications. At the moment, books have to be prepared according to the standards used by each vendor. On top of that, there is at least some uncertainty among customers created by vendor lock-in. Even people who are not familiar with the details of DRM and ebook gadgetry seem to be aware of that.