So, back to "Napster"ing: Considering how out-of-touch and out-of-sync the publishing industry has been, it might be surprising that the "bootleggers" haven't made a big enough splash to force the pubs to work together for a solution. But the likely reason is that, compared to other media (such as music), the e-book arena has been relatively small... much like hearing a cry of
"Yarr!" but from a small, isolated island.
(IOW:
"Yarr!" Oooh, I'm scared.
)
However, if a popular site arose that handled, among other things, anonymous file-sharing, and e-books became a significant proportion of the shared media, it could manage to capture enough of the web population to start to generate the kind of e-book transaction numbers (however fair or ilicit) that every pub would have to take notice of. That might give them the incentive to band together and create common, workable rules, prices and formats. And if not them, the indication of a large-enough market should be enough to encourage a large commercial company, possibly one already involved on the web, to create the e-book version of iTunes and bring those pubs together.
A popular-enough breakthrough of content could achieve roughly the same thing, but only if the trend was easily replicated, so as not to present an end to its popularity (IOW, it couldn't look like a fad, and it would have to have significant "bandwagon" status).