What are you buying when you buy digital?

One more complication in the print versus digital debate. A judge ruled that people who buy from iTunes aren’t actually buying a copy of the song, but are buying rights to listen to the song on whatever device the site allows.

One can assume this applies to electronic copies of books too. So why, then, would it be okay to charge more than print price for just the right to read the book? All you print people can cheer because this is a step toward keeping print books around (not that this wasn’t always true, but now you have legal proof.)