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Originally Posted by slayda
I've always been concerned about the unidirection that society places on "piracy". What about publishers that; 1) use DRM such that you are restricted to a single device, 2) require a special device to read their books, 3) charge prices as high as pbooks even though the cost of ebooks is much lower - i.e. no paper, ink, labor or facilities to produce & distribute, no middle man, etc.
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None of this is illegal; this is, in theory, what market forces are supposed to deal with. But it doesn't constitute theft or piracy because doing 1, 2 or 3 in any combination does not deprive you of something you owned before they did 1, 2 or 3.
#3 is, in particular, "what the market will bear". Books of all kinds have never been subjected to price controls in the U.S. as far as I can remember.
When someone steals from a copyright owner, the copyright owner has no choice in the matter. Piracy IS a uni-directional issue here; someone reproduces works that someone else owns the rights to reproduce.
But you as a consumer have every choice in the world not to buy anything encumbered by 1, 2 or 3.
France had the right idea - force all DRM systems to inter-op. Then real competition can happen; but that will never fly in this country because DRM is really about customer lock-in and has nothing to do with preventing unauthorized redistribution.