Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben Thornton
I understand that the fact that books have been, and mostly still are, physically distributed, has meant that the rights are often a patchwork across the globe. What I don't understand is why the publishers don't appear to want to make money all the same. It is not beyond the wit of man to credit a different copyright holder with their share of the spoils based on where an ebook was sold. It reminds me a bit of the rail network in the UK, which is split into lots of different companies that operate different services and stations. Despite this, the customer just sees a process of buying a ticket from A to B with agreed pricing. The division of the proceeds happens behind the scenes.
The only reasons that I can see that the publishers wouldn't have got together with retailers - or Amazon at least - to sort this out, are: (1) too small a market to bother, or (2) they don't want ebooks to succeed.
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I think it's a failure to recognize how serious of a problem it is. From what I've seen they think it's just a nuisance that people will have to deal with. They understand that ebooks are different when people start talking about reselling them, but they refuse to see them as different for geographic restrictions. I'm convinced they'll lose more money through geo restrictions then to piracy but it's easier to blame the evil boogie man then your own stupidity.
The large retailers (Amazon, Apple, Sony) are happy to keep geo restrictions because it keeps the small retailers out of the competition.