Security of Literature in the Age of Internet

I've worried about the security of eBooks, not necessarily about copyright infringement issues, but in the accessibility of eBooks. It's has been as easy to download free (illegal copies of ) eBooks as it is to download free music!

Last Christmas one of my cousins gifted me with a CD full of music and lots of ebooks. I was exstatic to have so many free books (for I am a voracious reader--that is, when I have the free time to read). But soon after, when I went through the ebooks and found some by my favorite authors (of which I already had all in print) my happiness drained a bit. These authors are all well-known, best-sellers. And yet they are receiving no money for all the hard work they put into their writing because someone stole it and sold it... for free!

Pirated music is a big problem for the music industry and could quickly become as big of one one for the publishing industry and authors. Needless to say, since I'm an aspiring author, this is not very comforting. 

So how are people to protect their books in electronic format? Ebook police?

I've contemplated this issue at length for a while and came upon the solution by accident 2 weeks ago. A friend of mine told me that the Borders website was giving members 2 free downloads of romance novel ebooks. Awesomesauce. So, I go, I download my ebooks, and... where the heck is it? There's something new on my desktop called FILE.acsm that I cannot open with any program I already have like a pdf or word document. *flail* So I went back to the Borders website and read the fine print when I went to download it again. Apparently an .acsm is a file that does not contain the ebook but a type of key or password that allows me access to the ebook, which can only be read through a certain Adobe Acrobats program that Borders' has linked to download. It is called Adobe Digital Editions.

Amazing!
Ironically, I both like and dislike this new security measure. I like it because it's a good security precaution so files cannot be stolen (unless you are a very determined thief and decide to retype the entire ebook, because you cannot copy and paste in this format).

On the other hand, the innate moocher and poor college student that I am, I do enjoy free stuffs--music, books, food, etc... Thus, it's unfortunate that I cannot have multiple copies of ebooks (of which I download all legally!) to give to friends. However, I never really shared them in the first place... and the Adobe Digital Editions does allow the ebook to be shared on up to 6 computers/devices, including ebook readers.