You're entirely correct. The difference between their historical analogy and the present case is that the present dispute has nothing to do with the technology

You're entirely correct. The difference between their historical analogy and the present case is that the present dispute has nothing to do with the technology (e-books have already been pretty universally embraced), it has to do with who benefits from its use. They're using the domain "readersunited" to imply that it's readers who benefit, which is only true in a very zero-sum way because Amazon is keeping all the power to cut author/published margins so hard in the future, and not at all true in the typical sense that a new technology can cut costs and introduce benefits for everyone.