http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/a.../FullText.html

Section 41.1 makes it illegal to distribute such technologies, devices, and components within Canada. It also makes it illegal to import such technologies, devices, and components.

Or did you want citations on downloading software being traceable? If you believe that downloads are not traceable, I suggest picking up a tool like Wireshark and seeing how much information can be gleaned from your Internet connection.

We know that companies like Amazon and Kobo are synchronizing reading data with their servers. Amazon stores, as a minimum, where you left off reading as well as highlights and annotations on their servers. If you have an Amazon account, you can verify this for yourself at http://kindle.amazon.com. Kobo's reader software also collects a lot of statistics at least some of which are synchronized with servers. I would have to do some experimentation to figure out how much information since it has been a while since I looked into it.

About the only conjecture is that vendors can use the data collected to surmise which books have had DRM removed. We know that these companies collect data about what and how we read. It is something that people can easily verify for themselves. At least some of that data is used for marketing purposes. Again, it is something that you can easily verify for yourself by looking at marketing materials from the vendors. None of that is conjecture. All of that is fact. You would be a fool to believe otherwise. What we don't know is the depth of the data collection and data usage. It may be a case of what we see is what is happening, or it may go much deeper. We simply don't know because the process is opaque. The possibility does exist though.