Quote:
Originally Posted by J. Strnad
I don't understand the concept of "renting" an ebook. It's electrons. You don't give back electrons. The idea of renting something to someone is that you get it back and rent it to someone else; over time you get more in rental fees than the item cost you. How does that apply to ebooks? You, as a publisher, make all the copies you want and send them to customers. There's no physical object to "rent." Maybe I'm missing something.
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Same thing happens with movies now via BlockBuster, NetFlix, Amazon. They are just electrons.
Currently, Overdrive.com does it with eBooks through your public library. They buy say 2 eBook copies of J Strnad's latest book. Then their database shows an inventory of two. When I rent it, I get a DRM'd copy tied to my device/account/credit card that expires at then end of the rental period. I can't read this book beyond the rental period. As patrons request this book the database count decrements until zero. Then no one else can rent it until the copies in the field expire - at that time the database count in incremented and other patrons can rent it.
So you are correct. There is nothing to return. The eBook file just becomes orphaned.