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Originally Posted by Anke Wehner
Yep. And that is why "we are just honouring our contracts which still date from print publishing and include geographic restrictions" is such a nonsensical arguement. Either there IS no actual ban on selling US paperbacks outside of North America, or Amazon.de has a huge lawsuit hanging over their heads...
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The problem is simple: in both cases the publisher buys the right to sell in a specific geographic region.
The problem exists because of different interpretations of the actual point of sale. With a physical book, the point of sale is the location of the seller. With an electronic book, the point of sale is the purchaser's credit card billing address.
So physical books can be sold to anyone anywhere in the world, but the seller can only sell books licensed for their region. So Amazon.de can only sell the physical editions that are available in Germany, but a German can buy the US edition from Amazon.com, because with paper books the restriction is on the seller, not the buyer.
For ebooks the restriction has been reversed and applies to the buyer.
It's the same restriction, applied based on the same factor (point of sale) but the definition of point of sale differs for physical and electronic sales, that's all.