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O_o This is turning into a rerun of the modern history of digital music distribution. Remember all those snazzy DRM audio file formats being launched by this or that company? Mp3 and piracy steamrolled the heck out of them.
The way things are going the clueless ebook biz will be steamrolled even harder.
These are facts: there's already a multi million peer community of seasoned p2p users, well experienced with downloading mp3's, tv series and films. There are groups releasing ebook releases. Ebook torrent sites are cropping up. The files are smaller (~1 MB for a book compared to 75 MB for one album) and so faster to copy and easier to store. The average user has seen bandwidth and storage capacity increase massively since the first wave of music piracy. And finally the incentives to pirate ebooks are even stronger since textbooks are more expensive than ever.
The above means that as soon as an ebook reader with decent features and low price comes along ebook piracy will pick up speed and mass adoption exponentially. Eat that, format war.
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