Thanks for the clarification Sweetpea.
It seems like maybe if Amazon wants to compete in Europe, (where I bet a lot more people read per capita than in the US) they should just release a non-Kindle, ePub compatible reader. Heck, they might even find that it sells like hotcakes in the USA too...
Proprietary formats have killed or stifled a lot of good technologies in the past: such as beta VCRs and Apple Macintosh computers.
I don't know how much time Amazon's Jeff Bezos spends reading here, but all these great ideas & gripes might be better directed to
kindle2-feedback@amazon.com.