Ebook publisher Harper-Collins sees this as a threat to its business and so wants to limit the number of times an ebook can be lent out link here. Mike Masnick at Techdirt observes, "two of the big publishers -- Macmillan and Simon & Schuster -- don't allow any lending of ebooks, which is unquestionably worse." He thinks such publishers will simply lose business in a publishing world that is becoming increasingly digital.
I suspect we will end up in a divided world, one part with cheap or free e books and another with expensive ones with sharply limited use. Nor would I count on big business being unable to get legislative changes that further limits user rights, all in the name of protecting authors but really to protect copyright owners who by then will be mostly "publishers". Competition might provide a better outcome, but it hasn't stopped cartels in other business lines. For the moment, however, the news is good.
