What a great article.

I have aquestion though; is there anyway in which I could remove DRM restrictions from content like ebooks and digital movies without breaking the law?… From my perspective, DRM certainly violates my first sale doctrine rights but it looks like this is something that has never been actually brought up in legal system…

What law is the one that actually says it is illegal to remove DRM restrictions from content that I’ve bought legally?

As for publishers maintaining healthy revenue streams: I’d actually argue that there is very little if any price discrimination in the paper book market. True price discrimination means charging different prices to different customers for the same exact product. What you refer to in the paper book market are simply 1) a secondary market, and 2) price-skimming . A secondary market is intuitive, and price-skimming is just reducing the price of a book over time as demand fades, like Apple does regularly. Neither are price discrimination, however. That said, true price discrimination is something that Amazon has pioneered online for many of the non-Kindle products on its website. Because of the data they have on customers’ past purchase history, search activity, etc. Amazon is able to make educated guesses as to income level, demand elasticity, preferences and general willingness to pay for the next product, thus enabling them to charge higher or lower prices for the same product, depending on the customer. This price discrimination is completely legal (and perhaps deserves the more euphemistic term of dynamic or variable pricing)! What raises concerns, however, are the privacy issues. Nevertheless, because there is no way to track purchase history or preferences in the paper book market, first-degree price discrimination has never been effective. With electronic purchases and centralized customer purchase information, it is possible and can be very profitable.

Thus, instead of a threat to profits, might you argue that e-books and readers could actually provide tremendously profitable opportunities for publishers by enabling them to sell more units and charge the maximum each customer is willing to pay. Of course, this all hinges on whether Amazon/publishers can limit the number of copies sold. But if so, might the pendulum in fact be far in their favor?

I’m curious though: are you suggesting that DRM technology is somehow illegal because it curtails the purchaser’s first sale rights? Or merely bad policy that should be corrected by the sellers or by legislative action?