That is, until there's a piece of content he wants that's not available from one of those vendors.

The problem with those vendors really comes down to selection, and they have a smaller selection. Like it or not, if there's something highly desirable and current, and he _must_ have it, he's going to have to deal with the inevitable pains of DRM, or resort to piracy.

I'm sure the bean counters at content producers have done the calculus of losing a certain percentage of prospective paying customers vs. convenience, and have decided that certain inconveniences are worthwhile.

Bit of a contradiction here, since he also says (before mentioning GOG, No Starch, etc.):

“So I bought it. For the first time in my life, I bought an ebook, because it's 2020, so why not.”

I find the "it's 2020" statement strange in more than one way.

Yeah, ebooks are higher tech than paper, but I find the experience to be worse than paper.

I have no problem reading long-form content on a screen, but I'd rather be reading a long scrolling HTML page than a "paged" ePub or PDF.

I just set up an Obooquity server on my network so I can access my eBooks from any device, and I dislike the experience. FWIW, I dislike physical eBook readers and mobile eBook reading apps too.

DRM aside, I feel like "it's 2020", and the fact you have to flip pages to read eBooks to be somewhat ridiculous.

Just an assumption on my part, but the 2020 statement might be referring to the current state of the world, i.e., thanks to ongoing quarantines in many places, it’s easier to buy e-books than physical ones.

I don't know about hardware readers, but there are apps that let you scroll instead of paging. In Calibre, for example, you can switch to "flow mode".

He also mentions Z Library, which is indeed an ebook piracy website.