The affordance of a computer -- the thing it's designed to do --
is to slice-and-dice collections of bits. The affordance of the
Internet is to move bits at very high speed around the world at
little-to-no cost. It follows from this that the center of the
ebook experience is going to involve slicing and dicing text and
sending it around.

Copyright lawyers have a word for these activities: infringement.
That's because copyright gives creators a near-total monopoly
over copying and remixing of their work, pretty much forever
(theoretically, copyright expires, but in actual practice,
copyright gets extended every time the early Mickey Mouse
cartoons are about to enter the public domain, because Disney
swings a very big stick on the Hill).

This is a huge problem. The biggest possible problem. Here's why:

[CHART: HOW BROKEN COPYRIGHT SCREWS EVERYONE]

* Authors freak out. Authors have been schooled by their peers
that strong copyright is the only thing that keeps them from
getting savagely rogered in the marketplace. This is pretty much
true: it's strong copyright that often defends authors from their
publishers' worst excesses. However, it doesn't follow that
strong copyright protects you from your *readers*.

* Readers get indignant over being called crooks. Seriously.
You're a small businessperson. Readers are your customers.
Calling them crooks is bad for business.