The Amazon, Apple, Macmillan Kerfuffle

I have been trying to follow the story of the dustup among Amazon, Apple, and Macmillan on pricing on e-book readers, but have been distracted by other things.  What interests me are the business models being pursued by the various parties here – and whose makes sense, whose doesn’t, and who is likely to survive and win out.  Plus – someone tell me what the legal status is of “books” that I purchase today on Kindle – am I simply purchasing a revocable license of some kind to read it?  What’s the legal condition.  I love my Kindle, and anticipated that some kind of pricing battles would eventually break out – but I sorta hoped that competition would favor me as a consumer.  At this point, is it?  Someone explain to me what’s going on.

Here’s Charles Martin on the business model; there are good stories in the Times, WSJ and FT.

Update:  Delighted to have Virginia Postrel, of whom I am a big fan, join the comments and point us to her article at the Atlantic business channel.  Very interesting article on pricing.

Update 2:  There are a number of exceptionally interesting comments here in the thread.

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