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To me geographic restrictions is like artificially trying to protect an old model put under pressure by emergency of the newer global marketplace. And it's not even managing that in any consistent way.
To me it seems utterly ridiculous that we would create a global marketplace and then cripple it by insisting on regionalising sales.
What I've never understood though is that this old model existed with the paper book medium and was the first thing to be theoretically blown away by the creation of the global marketplace. In Australia we already have unrestricted access to books from the UK and the US through online retailers. Amazon and others do not try to determine which region you reside in and will happily ship the books you've chosen anywhere you nominate. So regional publishing rights are already meaningless as far as the consumer is concerned.
Now, a newer medium (or a repurposed medium) comes along after the wrecking ball has already made light work of regional publishing rights at paper level. It's at this point that suddenly there's an attempt to protect these rights.
If I can not get ebooks in Australia due to regional restrictions, I may well resort to buying paper books. However, one thing is for certain, I won't be rewarding local publishers with that decision, I will be purchasing from Booktopia or Amazon.
You can't hold back the tide - it's never been a very successful business philosophy. Adapt or die is probably a better one.
Regards
Caleb
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