[twowheels]

I'm OK with such services (that allow offline usage) IF they don't replace purchasing options AND they make it clear that you're just 'renting'.

I subscribe to Rhapsody. I pay $15 per month for unlimited listening from their catalog & offline usage on three portable devices. This makes sense because, especially with my children, musical tastes change. I like a lot of different styles of music and can listen to anything that I want, on a whim, at work, and they can listen to the latest computer aided, marketing driven, talentless pop star of the week, without buying CDs every few weeks! Over the last 7 or so years I've probably spent more on music than I would have otherwise, I feel good that I'm not pirating the music, and everybody wins.

I'd gladly pay $15 per month to Amazon to be allowed unlimited online reading of any books in their kindle store & unlimited reading on 3 ebook readers, knowing full well that I don't own the books and they're gone when I stop paying. My daughter reads a book every day or two... at $10 per I'm usually begging her to instead use the library or trade with friends! Yeah, there are some books that she'd still want to buy (Like the HP series), but we'd buy paper copies of those books. It better reflects the reality of ebooks which aren't physical objects and are often read and forgotten.