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Not that new. Digital format files on a desktop personally owned computer predate the IBM PC. About 1976, four years after Project Gutenberg. Before that it was terminals on a server , or a corporate minicomputer.
We've had about 45 to 50 years to figure it out.
Ebooks were on PDAs before phones, in the mid 1990s, nearly 30 years ago. That's why Amazon bought the world leader of ebook file selling, Mobipocket, in 2005.
The not actually ever called epub1 was on a 1998 dedicated ereader.
The legal position of transfer of copyright digital files is clarified decades ago:
1) You can't give or sell or loan copies if it works standalone.
2) You can pass on the files if they need a per person hardware dongle, because you pass on the dongle and your copy doesn't work. This is like loaning the physical ereader.
3) In certain circumstances you can pass on a copy if there is verification your original is destroyed.
4) In some cases the vendor allows free copying and downloads without limit (now the case with MS) , but there is a DRM system involving a licence which you have to buy.
The only loans whatsoever of copyright files are by authorised (licenced) agents using DRM (Amazon, Kobo, Scribd, your local Library etc), not an individual or even a large Internet entity (e.g. Archive Org) simply doing it without authorisation.
By all means give someone a copy of a copyright media file if you think that's fine. But don't call it a loan. It's not, because you have no lending licence/contract and it's not a single physical entity handed over, you made a file copy and passed it on.
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