What if a book is just a URL?

I think this is what they are getting at:<p>I buy a book and get a unique URL which I can access the book at. Since I do not own the book, I assume it costs x dollars per month for continued access. While I am paying, this unique URL does not change thus I could send the URL to my friends to read the book on my dime. But as soon as I stop paying the unique URL no longer works.

I don't get this at all.<p>&#62; If a book is a URL, it is fantastically easy for you to lend a book to a friend: you simply give up access to the URL while they have it.<p>Yes, it is "easy" for you to give up access, as long as access to that URL is controlled, and this control is done by someone besides you.<p>In which case, this is "better" than DRM, exactly how?

You can't 'give up access to a URL'. The contents of the page that URL points to, maybe. But not a URL.<p>This is NO different than any other DRM, except that it requires you to be online to use it. Other DRM schemes allow lending, etc.<p>I can't imagine why someone thought this was a good solution to a problem... Or what exactly they thought that problem was.<p>Personally, I buy DRM-free ebooks and don't share them. I buy them for my use, on any machine I want (or paper, if I choose) but when I bought them, the deal wasn't that I could copy them for friends. Lending is a possibility, but not something I've done yet. Generally, if they are that good, I simply encourage them to buy the book also. Or, you know, go to the library.<p>In fact, the last physical books I lent out never found their way home. Still a little upset about that.

What if you want to read offline?

$ wget &#60;my book URL&#62; -O filename<p>Isn't it now a file?