If I power down my reader, where do the e-books go?

In this day and age, we all know what it means to have a hard drive go *fritzle* on you.
We are quite aware that when your camera gets stolen at the end of your trip in Venice, it is not the camera you miss.
We know that whatever you release on the net, might come back one day to haunt you, that unless all hard drives over the world go *fritzle* at the same time, chances(1) are your digital ejaculation lies dormant in some cache.

See, any *e* consists of current harnessed into patterns, digital blips in a computer somewhere out there.
*e*patterns are loss- and piracy-prone because of what they are; you cannot control both what they are and where they are. Let me be cutesy and call it ... uncertainty.

Reading about the Amazon vs. Macmillan slugfest on industry blogs, I find they focus strongly on the economics and legalities when discussing The Events That Shape The Future of Publishing, while neither is at the core of the issue. I think, for an industry specialized in dealing with words in any shape or form, they are strangely confused on definitions.

I'm not from the industry, but I do sort of try to keep up for reasons of hopefully becoming part of it one day. I also do not own an e-reader, nor have I bought an e-book. So, what follows could just be gibberish.
But I consider this a simple identity crisis, and as with any crisis, this one too shall pass. Usually some introspection and philosophy helps the process along, and I believe that must come before talking economics and legalities, or you end up with bad solutions that will haunt you forever by creating and endless string of insolvable problems.

To me, "publishing" means that I, as a consumer, can consume the published products. I own what I buy, and I can sell it to my neighbor or give it to charity if I want. As simple as that. I buy a bottle of lemonade, and neither the store (distributor) nor the producer (publisher) have the right to take the product back, whether I've already consumed it or not(2).
Of course, the industry will take my behavior into account when setting the price, but the industry also knows that my re-distributing the product is also a form of advertisement. When we're speaking *e*, there has to be a recovery procedure in place, as already existent in other *e* based industries (an option to buying a hard-copy (i.e. CD, not book) for a minimum of price increase, or having a second download chance, personalized *e*accounts that track my purchases,...)


But as I understand it, Amazon doesn't want to sell me e-books, do they? No, they want to sell me a service and pretend I've bought something. Alas (for them), as far as my trusted Oxford says:

to buy : obtain [= acquire : gain by and for oneself] in exchange for money etc.

Now, don't get me wrong: paying for a service only or not owning the e-book I want to read are not the issues. But I believe we already have a word for when someone has a catalog of books and you pay for the privilege to read them without owning them. And libraries don't let you buy, they let you loan.

I think all the players involved should declare whether they are publisher or distributor, online marketplace or library.

See, definitions will save the world!


(1) and do interpret this word as you always do, whatever your personal experience with Chance is. You feel lucky, punk?
(2) yeah yeah, unless the bottling line got infected with pieces of rat or the limes were poisoned. But even then, I may keep my bottled "rat's head on lemonade" if I want to, right?