[Sigia-l] Buy or rent?

[Listera]

As you may know, a slew of companies have failed to make any dent in Apple's
dominance on digital music download business. Now that Microsoft's Janus
platform is available to transfer DRMed music from PCs to mobile devices,
companies like Napster are looking to 'subscription' or 'rent' of digital
music as a differentiator against Apple's iTMS, which so far offers straight
purchases only.

Some people may not even be aware of the fact that when you stop paying your
monthly fees to these subscription services, your 'rented' music disappears.
One would assume this doesn't get much mention in the $30MM ad campaign
Napster is undertaking:

Napster Unveils Portable Service, Anti-iPod Campaign
<http://snipurl.com/ci76>

Question: I'm aware of some such 'subscription' services like digital tech
books or developers' tools, etc. Has anyone worked on or know of any
subscription services (where one loses his digital assets upon unsubbing)?
Anyone aware of any study of user preference on buy vs. rent for relatively
small online purchases?

Ziya
Nullius in Verba