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The criticism that an ebook with code, video or sound is not something new, but simply an application as they have been doing for thirty years is rather naïve. From this point of view, an ebook has nothing more than the dozens of formats to manage texts that have been created in the world of information technology in the last 40 years. What changes, let's face it clearly, is that none of the tools created to represent digital texts were born to make them enjoyable to read. As immature and clumsy as it is, e-ink is a key achievement in opening up a digital reader market.
Now: once this digital text reading tool exists, what should stop me from doing digital stuff instead of mimic the "book object" digitally? If I can program digital things that appear on instruments that use a screen that makes it enjoyable to be read, why should I cut my hands off and not come up with things that I couldn't do with a paper book?
One objection is that the book is for the pleasure of reading, and that animations, video and sound are not reading, and therefore shouldn't fit inside an object born to read. But in reality, sounds, animations and videos are not in, not because of the noble choice of the "pleasure of reading", but because the book just can't do it. They are not there because the book is not able to keep them within itself. Otherwise it would keep contain them, as it contains photographs and comics.
We must not think of the ebook as a digital object that serves the pleasure of reading, but an object that serves the pleasure of knowledge.
And don't think of videos and animations and sounds as extraneous to writing: words can change over time, they can move in space, they can interact with the reader, create stories, connect with other stories, enter a video and relate with it. Words can speak and make sounds. Again: words can stop having meaning, become signs, no longer mean anything.
Don't you want to call them ebooks because they look less and less like books? Maybe you are right, new terms are needed to define digital objects ranging from video games to electronic literature. Digital publications, polistories, electronic novels, multimedia essays.
I'm not interested in the term and I'm not even interested in the format, as much as their raison d'etre: right now they are the most interesting thing to do in literature and keeping them out of the digital publishing market is a huge contradiction.
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