The title is misleading and makes it sound like the publishers are actually trying to kill e-books which is not the case.
The idea that e-books are licenses is self-serving for the publishing industry. Since they can't control distribution of an e-book after it leaves their site, they want legal controls. So they can sell the book more than once.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2019/11/01/775150979/you-may-have-to-wai...
At the very least, "trying to kill e-books" would mean that publishers were actually attempting to convince people to buy paper books instead of e-books, which is not something they are doing. Moreover, when I first read the title of this article, I thought that publishers were actually considering ceasing publication of ebooks, which is definitely not what is being described.