I kind of get this... but without some technology behind it, I don't see how they'd expect some guarantee that eBook lending would be restricted to certain parties.
I'm surprised the AG has not come out against services like BookCrossing which allows individuals to trade physical books and works similarly to LendInk. (Maybe there was and I just didn't hear about it).
There is technology behind it, Amazon only lets you lend book once and only to one person. You can't read the book while the person you lent it to is reading it. The lend period expires in 14 days. So the lending is pretty limited compared to a physical book. About the only thing good about it is that you automatically get the book back in 14 days. I'm still waiting on some physical books I have lent to others to be returned...
Does Kindle lending limit you, in some way, to lending to certain people, though?
It sounds like there were two objections:
1. OMG, this site is pirating my content!
2. I didn't want people to lend to anyone, just their friends and family
Case #1 is clearly an issue of authors being misinformed or technologically unsophisticated.
Case #2 is that authors probably thought that they were buying into a particular scenario, but the technology did not actually serve that scenario. The scenario I'm guessing the second camp thought they were buying into was one where lending would actually not be widespread --- where one would have to personally know someone in order to read a book without purchasing. It didn't limit who could be lent to by forcing users to declare "friends and family". I'm guessing that authors felt that LendInk was increasing the amount of lends actually happening above what would have happened had LendInk not been present.
Note: I'm not passing judgement on LendInk. Just that I don't think many people are able to make the technical distinctions that many HN readers or readers of tech sites are able to make.
"Does Kindle lending limit you, in some way, to lending to certain people, though?"
Nope. That would require that Amazon have some way to investigate whether someone was really your "friend" (how is "friend" defined?) and be willing to spend the money to carry out the investigation. Not likely for a $1.99 ebook.
Perhaps they could limit you to a list of friends (a maximum of ten or whatever) but that wouldn't allow you to (e.g.) lend programming books to one set of friends and novels to another.
When I launched BookCrossing in 2001, some in the press called us "the Napster of books," but 11 years later and I can count the number of complaining authors on one hand. We never heard from any of the guilds. I think our focus on serendipitous book releases and catches helped in that regards.
Well, they could come out against such services all they like but wouldn't have a legal leg to stand on because of first sale doctrine. And they know that.
I'm surprised the AG has not come out against services like BookCrossing which allows individuals to trade physical books and works similarly to LendInk. (Maybe there was and I just didn't hear about it).