It seems to me that whenever technology makes new things possible, entrenched interests look to it as a way to make more money while offering you less. There are no physical printing or distribution costs for an e-book, and only a minimal retail cost. Preparation costs are sunk into the first printed copy, and only two parties – publisher and retailer – to split the cash between. So this measure looks a lot like greed to me.

This is an example of publishers drawing analogies between e-books and paper books, but only when it is convenient (read “profitable”) for them to do so. It is bad enough that they get to decide if and when a book may be placed into a library, and for how long it may be borrowed, but now they want to decide how many times it can be lent citing real-world book wear. But if you buy an e-book you cannot re-sell or give it away, and you can only lend it once. Why? Because they said so.

So whose book is it anyway? Whose “rights” are being “managed” here? Certainly not mine…

Bah.

Universal metered access also has another advantage. If an obscure title briefly gets high-profile attention, within hours there could tens of thousands of metered rentals. No buy-to-loan scheme, printed or digital, can respond that fast. And those who get those download-in-a-minute copies will tell their friends, resulting in still more metered charges.

–Michael W. Perry, author of Untangling Tolkien