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Old 12-01-2007, 04:51 AM   #2
dhbailey
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Join Date: Mar 2007
Device: HP iPAQ211 / PRS 500, 700 and 505
The problem isn't Sony's -- it is a publisher problem. Publishers in one country license their books sometimes to publishers in other countries. In other situations, authors sign contracts with a publisher in one country and retain the rights to sign separate deals with publishers in other countries. So while an author may have a contract with Random House in the United States, he or she may have a contract with [supply name of British publisher here] for sales in the United Kingdom and may have yet another contract with a publisher in France and a different contract with a publisher in Hong Kong.

So Random House is not able to sell that author's books in the United Kingdom or France or Hong Kong (or any country where the author has signed a contract with a different publisher).

So the Sony Connect web-site is restricted to selling to United States addresses only (which they verify by requiring a United States address on the credit card on file with the account) since the books they sell come from publishers who have contracts with the authors to sell their books in the United States.

What will eventually have to happen is ebook sellers will have to work out license deals in different countries and then figure out how to sell the appropriate edition of a book for each country a customer comes from. I can't begin to imagine the legal nightmare this will entail.

What might happen is that publishers will eventually realize there is a critical mass already reached in the ebook marketplace to make it worthwhile for them to sell directly, bypassing the Sony Connect (or Amazon) online stores.

That way Publishers licensed to sell these books in Poland can sell directly to you and those who are licensed to publish the same books in the United States can sell directly to me.

Don't blame Sony -- blame the huge ugly morass that copyright laws in various countries are, and the fact that there is no single planetary copyright law and copyright treaty which would allow publishers to sell anywhere.
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