Contrast that with Amazon ebooks (fairly typical):
•Amazon requires users to identify themselves to get an ebook.
•In some countries, including the US, Amazon says the user cannot own the ebook.
•Amazon requires the user to accept a restrictive license on use of the ebook.
•The format is secret, and only proprietary user-restricting software can read it at all.
•An ersatz “lending” is allowed for some books, for a limited time, but only by
specifying by name another user of the same system. No giving or selling.
•To copy the ebook is impossible due to Digital Restrictions Management in the player. and prohibited by the license, which is more restrictive than copyright law.
•Amazon can remotely delete the ebook using a back door. It used this back door in 2009 to delete thousands of copies of George Orwell's 1984.
•Amazon can do anything whatsoever to a user, by force, through a universal back door.