The Big Five publishers should be long past "Does DRM buy us anything useful?" and should be thinking about "Is DRM hurting our interests?" The effect of DRM o

The Big Five publishers should be long past "Does DRM buy us anything useful?" and should be thinking about "Is DRM hurting our interests?" The effect of DRM on piracy is negligible at best and could be actively promoting it at worst (when ordinary customers get stuck in these hoops). Meanwhile, the main practical impact of ebook DRM is to create lock-in for ebook DRM providers, especially the ones that are also retailers, like Amazon. The Big Five publishers seem convinced that Amazon is a serious threat to their business. Given that, I don't understand why they give Amazon the club to beat them with by insisting on the customer-hostile misfeature of DRM. If they hadn't done that in the first place, perhaps they wouldn't have felt forced to solve their "Amazon problem" with an illegal conspiracy in the second place.