This reminds us of the war between Microsoft and Adobe over eBook "activations" a year or two ago.  When those two vendors first came out with their eBook technologies, they set a fixed number of times that the eBook could be "activated" for use on a device.  Microsoft initially set the number to 2 -- the rationale being one desktop computer and one laptop or Pocket PC device, or one main copy and one backup in case of a disk crash.  After a consumer outcry, it raised the number to 4.  Both vendors eventually toyed with raising the limits to 8 or 10.  But by that point, book publishers started to raise the alarm. 

Educational publishers in particular expressed deep concern that students in a class that required a certain eBook would use the "activations" so that other students would not have to pay -- so that if an eBook allowed 10 activations, then a class of 20 students could deliver sales of as little as 2 units to the publisher.  It is thus unsurprising that the current outcome of these discussions is neither widely known nor very clear. 

Yet there is a big difference between a service like fnac's and the above eBook skirmishes: fnac has licensed a large body of material from major recording companies specifically for this type of use, and -- as we never tire of pointing out -- it was able to easily configure Microsoft Windows DRM to provide their less-restrictive copying features.  It is true that DRM technology requires that hard numerical limits be set on various ways of copying material, as opposed to allowing judgments to be made based on the type or character of the copies.  But beyond that, we feel especially confident that the market in Europe will decide questions of how many copies to allow users to make.  To most Europeans, the term "fair use" refers unambiguously to consumer expectations and is not, as in the US, also a legal term of art.

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