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@Hitch. Very interesting post. I wasn't aware that such a high percentage of authors want DRM. I presume that statistic comes from your own experience in business? I don't disagree with your comments about casual copying and the purpose of DRM. Though the problem, of course, is that removing DRM is not limited only to the technically sophisticated or to the sort of people who visit this site. It is truly just a quick search away, and so-called "digital natives" are pretty good at searching for just about anything they want. To take your example, let's say that someone tries to copy an Adobe epub protected book onto the computer of one of their friends or family members, only to find to their astonishment that the copy won't work. How many truly just give up, or even think about it and decide they shouldn't be doing it? Yes, there are certainly some. But are there enough to justify the cost to themselves and the detriments to their customers? It is in some ways like putting a low fence around a property. It makes people aware by its mere existence that they should not be entering the property without authorisation, but denies the possibility of physical unauthorised entry only to those few physically incapable of climbing it. I don't know if we really have the information or statistics to come to a definitive answer.
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