Some of us knew this 30 years ago

The remark about books from other authors is amusing. To take an example of something approaching this, apparently people are so fed up of the Norwegian publishing cartel that they're happy to buy Norwegian literature in electronic form in English (and other) translations for substantially less money than they would pay to read the original versions in their own (and the readers' native) language. Who is making things hard for whom, exactly?

When some industry will only participate on their own terms and nothing short of those terms, you can't claim that those terms facilitate customer convenience, justifying it by noting that otherwise there would be nothing to buy at all. Especially when people can probably track down an "illegal" copy more easily than going through whatever excruciating purchasing experience the publishers have in mind.