DRM systems are not secure, cumbersome and prevent users getting full access and rights.

As owners in all spheres call the shots, unless consumers get organised nothing will change. And until this fear owners have for e-books can be addressed satisfactorily anything done or offered will be in sum cosmetic. Whatever has been done so far looks at best 50% thought out.

The other issue: are books better anyway? Well, yes, so far they still are. Simpler easier to handle and certainly more fun than recharging batteries and paying premium prices for digital. So as they say in tecchie land the alternative has to be ten times better (and ten times cheaper).

You are right, cost is the key. But IP owners won’t let justifiable low cost happen, so it seems it will take a new company (something like Google) with perhaps new IP which simply takes it all out of the paper book producer’s hands before anything like seismic shift happens. Either that or slow development over years and years, certainly not Moore’s Law pace. I have always believed the best solution is a marraige of the two, educating the consumer to respect the two alteratives and believing in them. But it seems paper producers have no faith in the intelligence of consumers and want analogue/digital divorce at all and any cost to readers.

Remember. 97% of the content that fills iPods is not music bought from the iTunes store, but it’s user-generated MP3s that comes from ripping audio CDs.

However, there is now a device that makes book ripping a much easier task.
Check it out for yourself. This book ripper is called BookSnap.

Check it out for yourself:
http://www.atiz.com