[pbhjpbhj]

If such sharing were allowed - and I do recall schemes for it, our UK library does [did at least] such a thing and it's used in software (eg Steam allows you to share with a family member but you can't both use the game simulataneously [based on docs not experience]) - then people would embrace it. For example we share our physical DVD collection with any of our friends that ask, we'd be more than happy to have a collection in common of media with a network of friends such that 10 families could purchase items and have them in kind, only being able to use them serially.

The problem with this is that you could get a network of 1000s of households/users and still rarely have clashes in use. Such clashes could be managed such that additional copies are purchased (or the user chooses an alternative item of media) as needed. Then you're probably going to be able to serve 10s of thousands in a group and still reduce overall number of media items purchased.

That's the halfway point between torrent style file sharing and library lending. Imagine you could access the currently used media libraries of all your friends (and "friends") ...