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Flawed analogy time!
Let's say the vast majority of writing comes to be distributed and read as e-books. Technically savvy readers figure out fairly quickly how best to copy and distribute these. Large efficient pirate rings spring up that freely disseminate just about every book produced in certain genres related to high tech, computing, and science fiction. These pirates tend to ignore romance novels, self-help books, and woodworking magazines.
The major SF publishers gradually shrink and start going out of business. Some start experimenting with ways to "add value" for their readers that can't be as easily reproduced by piracy, but this is easier said than done. Some, let's say Tor for example, start experimenting with more aggressive copy protection and other sorts of DRM. They botch their first stabs at this and get lots of complaints from their readers about being treated like criminals. The CEO of Harlequin posts an editorial about how silly it is for Tor to continue to beat its head against the wall; the only sensible thing to do is publish books of the sort that won't be pirated. Harlequin is doing fine!
SF readers around the world are strangely not completely satsified with this argument.
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