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The problem is, if you make bad laws or bad EULA's or bad TOS - whatever term applies to a situation - then they will just get ignored.
So while Amazon may have stated that you are only "renting" an eBook, a normal person would not expect that returning too many totally unrelated toasters or step stools purchased from Amazon, or writing too many product reviews, would result in them terminating your membership and taking away your eBooks and other digital purchases.
Hence, their EULA/TOS tends to get ignored. As it should be. There is a concept that most people are aware of, called "fairness". If something isn't fair, then all bets are off. People will save their eBooks locally and protect what they have paid for despite Amazon's claims that they can't do that.
Once you've created laws/EULA's/TOS that define normal everyday reasonable behavior as criminal, well, then everybody becomes a criminal. And by definition, criminals don't obey laws. So once you're branded a "criminal" for returning too many toasters, why not take advantage of all the other perks that criminals enjoy? Like keeping local copies of all your eBooks. Especially since they didn't define what "criminal" was - how many returns for example - and only came up with some vague statement after the fact, like: "You're a criminal - you violated something that we can't/won't describe to you - your membership is now canceled".
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