One of the biggest debates in electronic publishing is over the rights of the purchaser to share or resell a digital file. With a traditional book, this was not an issue: If you own a book, you can lend it out as often as you'd like or resell it after you finish reading it. With eBooks, however, the customer is only purchasing a license to use a digital file, and large publishing companies would rather sell many licenses than allow customers to lend or borrow books.
Closely related to the debate over digital rights management is the question of libraries lending eBooks to patrons. The publishing company Harper Collins, for example, put a cap of 26 loans on their eBooks, creating a great deal of controversy among librarians. Many of the other large publishing companies, however, do not currently allow libraries to circulate their eBooks at all. As e-readers become more prevalent, readers will need the ability to borrow these files from libraries.
Another ethical dilemma in e-publishing comes from literary agents becoming eBook publishers. Since agents are expected to sell authors' books to publishers and collect a commission, an agency that starts an e-publishing company opens itself to ethical breaches and conflicts of interest. Since the model for literary agents was conceived around traditional publishing, a new code of ethics may have to be designed as the industry transitions into a more digital model.
Many librarians and book bloggers have now begun to advocate for a "User's Bill of Rights" that would define eBook buyers' expectations of publishers. Among the proposed rights of eBook users are: the ability to access eBooks on any platform, using any hardware the user chooses; the right to annotate, print or otherwise share eBook content; and the right to archive, retain or resell eBook content. If this bill of rights was adopted, this would need to occur after negotiations with the major publishing companies.