This salon article on San Fran Public Library lending ebooks tries equate it with napster, but unfortunately a central fact in the article is incorrect: an ebook owned by the library can only be checked out by one person at a time. This is obviously dumb, but it's the only way netlibrary (who is running this service and marketing it to libraries across North America) could get publishers to participate. So it's basically just like a book, except it's harder to read and less portable. Just what publishers want - one step closer to leasing books to libraries (and what I think is their holy grail - pay per read).

I know all this because we're participating in the pilot project too.