I'll talk to you about this from an academic law school library perspective, because that's what I'm most familiar with.
Currently, we subscribe to Canadian e-books called Essentials of Canadian Law from Irwin Law Inc. We buy the print books and put them out on the reserved shelves, and we also have the e-books. The e-books are very popular among the students because they can all access them. There isn't just the one copy on contract law. They are preparing an assignment, and they can all access it, and that's not a problem. The problem—the evil problem—is when you enter into a licence or a contract with a distributor and find that the rules are so restrictive that you can't even possibly comply with the needs of the users.
For example, I recently bought a U.K. e-book from England. It came in on a particular platform. I was going to print one chapter for the benefit of one faculty member who wanted to read it not on the screen, but wanted to read it in print. I knew that one chapter was a perfectly allowable thing to do. I made a mistake and I printed off the wrong 20 pages. I was locked. I could not get back in there. I could view the chapter, but I couldn't print it for the benefit of the faculty member. I had to call him into my office so he could read it from my screen. That's how evil these digital locks can be. They can be very good in terms of regulating how materials are used; yet, at the same time, they close down what we see as our traditional ways of people being able to communicate in a scholarly fashion.