It's a shame but they kind of had this coming. Amazon's book-lending feature only really works with their business model as long it is just small groups of peop

It's a shame but they kind of had this coming. Amazon's book-lending feature only really works with their business model as long it is just small groups of people lending to each other. They were never going to stand for people circumventing the whole model of individual payment by sharing books with random strangers over the internet. I'm not saying Amazon (and the whole e-book industry) is morally right in restricting sharing like this, but you can't expect them not to stand up for their own interests. In the long term, I'm sure we'll end up with freely distributable e-books. But that won't happen via Amazon's or Apple's online stores, which are quite clearly on the side of restricting distribution in order to charge for it.