As many have remarked already, the situation of the "ebook industry" and the "music industry" are quite similar in regard to the changes that the internet is forcing on them.
The greatest difference is that the ebook industry actually has a head start: It's made by people who are focused on the digital side of the issue from the beginning, while the record lables have been pretty much steamrollered by the sudden appearance of Napster&Co.
There are stores that legally sell the books you'd like to read, even before the ebook-wave has become mainstream. In case of Mp3s it took some years until it was possible to buy your songs at a reasonable price online. Up to that point, piracy roamed uncontested. Then people began to adapt (not the record lables, Apple had to shove them towards the solution...). In the case of ebooks, the transition to digital media will probably be a little smoother, simply because the awareness of the oncoming problems is present.
I'm not thinking that there is too little piracy to let ebooks rise. Ebooks will become mainstream, as the devices get cheaper and people start to notice that the displays really are as good as paper. It just will not be a sudden explosion, but a gradual ascent. And there will be piracy.
It seems to me, right now many people are beginning to accept piracy more as a fact that exists and always will, rather than as an evil that has to be rooted out no matter what (hello music industry). Which leads to the (painful) realization that, if piracy isn't inherently evil, one can use the picacy dominated channels (P2P) in order to do marketing (the free prerelease of albums etc.). The fact that this kind of thing works, leads to the second painful realization: The "pirates" are valuable customers and a great word of mouth-marketing tool. Which leads to two painful conclusions: First, you can't root them out. Jailing 1/10th of the internet users, which is a conservative estimate of the number of people who have copied something illegally, doesn't sound realistic. And second, the painful part, you don't even want to root them out. Do you want to jail your customers? Do you want to jail the people who advertise for you?
The final conclusion, though highly disturbing for me, seems clear: The concept of seeing piracy as stealing is dead.
In analogy to the "
e-music industry", there probably will be no big problems for the
ebook industry, regardless of DRM. Curtailed property rights and such, probably will, over short or long, just force vendors to lower the price on the DRM files a bit (or enable others to distribute non DRM titles at a higher price). It's not a very serious issue in my opinion.
Those, who will have to deal with serious changes, as in the music industry, are the publishers. Their role will have to change, with less focus lying on the printing press and distribution of the word. The internet does an superb job of such things all by itself. The weight will have to shift to the marketing side and, above all, quality control and support of the author.
The publishers will adapt. Simply because they have to. And talented artists won't starve. Because we all still want to read great books.
Whatever happens, it will be interesting to watch.
P.S: iREX DR1000 is best for viewing unprocessed PDFs in my opinion
