It's akin to a lot of decisions these days "we need better hardware" instead of fixing/optimizing our software.

There have been several corrections made in this department, but so far it's just not enough.

Jim Gettys has been leading this charge since 2012. You can find a lot of good information on his blog:

http://gettys.wordpress.com/20...

And there are a multitude of videos on the topic as well.

While running fiber everywhere with proper hardware support would be "fast", fixing the bufferbloat problem would be a gigantic leap forward (and not just for the US).

No need to drop ebooks altogether, simply support the ebookstores that sell DRM-free ebooks.

A great example of this is Baen Books. They jumped on the ebook bandwagon quite early on and actually took it a step beyond selling books: They offer a lot of them completely free. Eric Flint pushed for this and convinced Baen it was a great idea. The Baen Free Library introduction is written by him and describes the reasons behind the whole movement (the BFL came online back in late 2000, definitely not a late-comer).

They have continued to uphold the DRM-free ideals and offer their ebooks in many different formats. The Free library project offers many books and new ones get added all the time. The financial idea is pretty simple: If you give away the first (or more) books in a series you've written... if they don't suck, folks will want to buy the rest of the series and a good percentage will buy the original ones simply to support an author who has the temerity to do such a thing as sell books without DRM.

At any rate, take a look at the project. The purchases are done via Webscriptions. I'm a long time supporter of them, but have no affiliation.