You actually can't make that assertion in confidence. To do so, you have to measure the utility of the benefits to a given individual, and the utility of the money they spend on it, and quantify the risk of Amazon revoking/pulling the content.

As hard as it might be for you to believe, your subjective worldview is not absolute reality, and not everyone shares your world-view and definition of utility, so you can't actually judge whether their actions are self-defeating for them.

Once again, just because the benefits don't outweigh the costs for you does not mean it can't be a net positive for other people. eBooks have resulted in me reading twice the number of books I would've read otherwise and I've never bought an ebook that costs more than the physical copy. Explain to me how that is counterproductive or self-defeating.

Laws are simply the consequences you face if you get caught performing behavior deemed illegal. The chances of someone being punished for removing the DRM from an eBook are essentially nil (provided you're not sharing it).

There are several stores that sell content legally in DRM-free ePub, such as ebooks.com, not to mention all of the public domain content from Project Gutenberg.

Moreover, I think consumers who have purchased a legal copy of a physical or DRM'd book have the moral authority to torrent a matching non-DRM copy, legal technicalities be damned.

Please don't try to paint everyone with the same brush, or resort to name-calling. Techies usually understand the trade-offs and risks, and non-techies simply need to be educated.