

Amazon 'to launch book rental service' - rickdale
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/amazon/8757122/Amazon-to-launch-book-rental-service.html

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robertskmiles
The idea of 'rental' of a digital file is very strange to me. Generally rental
is cheaper than purchase because at the end of the rental period, you return
the thing and it can be lent again. Thus the marginal cost of sale is the cost
of production plus admin, while the marginal cost of loaning is just the admin
of managing the rental.

Renting is done because it has a lower marginal cost than selling.

But with a digital file the inverse is true. Renting must have _at least_
equal marginal cost to selling, because you still have to supply the bandwidth
for the download, but then you have the potential extra cost of trying to
ensure that the device stops allowing access to the file past a certain date.

tl;dr Digital files are not physical objects, and it doesn't make sense to
treat them the same.

