On the other hand, I've been reading eBooks on Palms/Smart Phones for 13 years now, and currently do more than half of my reading on such. With eBooks on my phone, I can do things that are impossible with printed books. I can carry many of them around. I can read in short bursts effectively, since they're portable and on my always-with-me device. I never lose a book — the two companies I buy from maintain my library in the cloud, and the free books I get from Gutenberg et al are always there.

In thinking about this, I'm beginning to regard “book” as two different things, the same as I have regarded “movie” since VHS came out. When I go to see a movie in the theater, I am renting the right to see it once, on a big dang screen, surrounded by people, in a dark place that smells like popcorn and corn syrup. I don't object to the fact that, when it's over, I have nothing to sell, trade, keep, display, etc. It's the movie experience. I can talk about having seen it, quote it, blog it, review it, pan it, etc. But the “it” doesn't belong to me in any way other than experientially. Two months from now, though, I can buy the DVD. That “thing” is mine. I can watch it 100 times, loan it to my brother, sell it at a used video store, loan it, display the case on my shelf, etc. They are two fundamentally different types of transactions.

I buy some books now in print because I make the pre-purchase decision that the physical-ness of the book is important to me. Large, colorful photo books. Tutorial/teaching books that I need to mark-up. Funny books that I know I'll only read once and want to loan away forever. Books by certain authors that are important enough to me to warrant space on my shelf as “personal historical art.”

If you want the rights associated with a DVD, buy the DVD. If you want to sit in a theater and watch on a big screen with your arm around your gal, do that. If you want to trade a book, give it away, use it as a coaster… buy the print version. If you want to read it on your phone while standing in line at the BMV, buy the eBook.

It's not complicated to me anymore. It's just two different things. Choice is good. Yes?

if you let somebody borrow the actual Kindle where the e-book is stored, then in a sense you are extending the traditional ownership rights.

As for your subpoints:

1) Operationally, it's difficult to prevent downstream resales of used items, but, if it were unlawful, it'd not be nearly as difficult as you think. Libraries and used book vendors would immediately cease to exist, leaving only peer-to-peer lending/sales. You couldn't eradicate it but you could hamper it dramatically.

2) I agree. DRM is a bad attempt to solve the problem I'm articulating. What we need, legislatively and technologically, is a framework which meets our already-existing vision of how ownership works. DRM does not do that, at all, for the reasons you articulated and others.

The simplification comes because the license is linked to the physical object both legally and also as a physical copy protection. It is difficult to “copy” a book and everyone understands that isn't allowed.

There are two important differences though…
1) Because it is effectively impossible to enforce limitiations on transfering the book + license then sellers don't actually limit this use. However they do use other means to do this. For example text book publishers regularly bring out new editions reducing the ability of students to resell books to the next cohort of students. However the technical mechanisms to prevent copying are equally effective at preventing transfers and so publishers have chosen to limit transfer rights. They don't have to but it is in their interests to. This appears just to be a fact of life. One of those “can't do anything about” issues we should have serenity about.

2) The technical mechanisms used to enforce license limitations (DRM) are by nessessity proprietry to prevent people from reverse engineering them to bypass the protections. They also rely on a DRM infrastructure to validate a copy so it can be used on a specific device. The problem for the consumer is that when you buy a physical book then if the publisher goes out of business they still own the book and it doesn't become unusable. However with DRM protected purchases if the proprietry software is not updated and maintained so it can be used on the latest devices and operating systems or if the DRM infrastructure is not maintained and kept operational then the purchase can become unusable at exactly the point when it is no longer viable to recover compensation from the supplier. Here there are possibilities to protect the consumer. For example it could be a legal requirement to place unprotected copies of DRM protected purchases into escro. If a purchaser can demonstrate they can no longer use the purchase and the supplier is no longer trading then an unprotected copy could be provided. This would appear to be an area where we should have the courage to demand changes of our legislators.