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And an author can decide how he will sell his books to me, how I might use them, for how long and how many copies (if any) I am allowed to have or create. If I do not like the terms at which the author is offering his book to me, I will not buy it. Period.
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This is all very well, but there is one crucial point in which a book differs from other articles: a book is not a device to do work, like a car, but a container for a story. An author can (presumably) tell me, what I can do with the container, but he can't tell me what to do with his story. As soon as I've read it, his story is copied into my brain. It won't go away as soon as the lease periode has expired. At least, not as far as I know...
This may sound trivial, but it is the basis on which books are sold. An author has a great idea for a story and writes it down. A publisher is willing to "clean it up", put it in a container (a book) and sell it to an audiance. Both the author and the publicer have done actual work for the book so both should get paid. But there is no reason why they should be paid twice if I want to switch from one e-reader to another. Their work is done, they've been paid, I only want the story in another format. This means that when I have paid for the story and the container, I am free to do what I want with the story and the container. Of course, it wouldn't be fair to resell the story to somebody else, acting as if it was my story. That's why there is something like copyright.
Drm is only there, because we (and the book industry) mistake the container for the story, but basically that's not right: you want to pay for the story, not for the container (although you may be willing to spend some extra money if it's a very nice container, like a hard-cover).
Those are my 2c$
