The first one lauds giving other people access to books for free, leading to the author not getting compensated. Not even DRM (which watermarking isn't) prevent

The first one lauds giving other people access to books for free, leading to the author not getting compensated. Not even DRM (which watermarking isn't) prevents you from sharing knowledge for free. Just write something on your own containing that knowledge and put it up for free. The thing with the regime seems a bit constructed, but even then authors can just decide to publish those few books where this applies without watermarks. If your goal is to reach people living in a regime you would want to translate the text from english into the language of the place anyway (I don't know of english speaking regimes)