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Well for books that are lendable (very few from the major publishers) there is already a limit on how often they can be loaned.
Once
Ever
I have no doubt that there are some in Publishing who are chomping at the bit to find a way to make eBooks "wear out" the way their physical counterparts do. I'm sure that some realize it would be a Public Relations disaster .... but given their actions over the past couple of years I'm not confident that would stop them.
More realistically I see them going at it from the Retail level. In other words, the next contract they offer up to Amazon dictates that they must limit the number of times a book can be downloaded from the archives. After all, Amazon doesn't keep back-ups of paper books for us now, do they? That's pretty much their goal, to turn eBooks into the financial equivalent Hardback titles.
And then we'll hear all their pissing and moaning about how they're doing it all for our own good, the future of literature, and think of the poor starving authors.
But Harry is right, there is more than enough real world nastiness going on to worry about something that hasn't happened and hopefully won't ever happen.
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