Quote:
Originally Posted by objectman
If you ask me, the publishers are shooting themselves in the foot. A basic Google search for the title of a book that is not available in my country has many links to non-legal sources.
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What would you have the publishers do?
I'm an author. I write a manuscript. I interest an agent, who attempts to place my manuscript with a US publisher. I'm lucky, and my agent succeeds. The publisher offers a contract to publish my book
in the US.
So far, so good. What about elsewhere? My publisher may not
have subsidiaries in other countries, and even if it does, those subsidiaries are independent entities. The fact that the US division chose to publish the book is no guarantee they will see it as something
they can sell.
I've been a good boy and said my prayers every night, and God passes a miracle to order: my book gets interest from foreign publishers. A British publisher contracts to do a UK edition. French, German, and Spanish publishers contract to issue translations in their markets. Each has licensed the exclusive right to publish and sell the book in
their territory.
Okay, what about ebooks? Those are cross-border by definition, because the Internet is world-wide, and there is no
physical reason someone on this side of the world can't access a book published on the other side.
There
are legal reasons. Does that publisher on the other side of the world have the
right to sell the book on this side of the world? Chances are good they do not, and attempting to do so will be illegal. It's not their fault, as they can't sell what they don't have rights to.
Given the world wide nature of the Internet, going forward, I think we'll see more publishers explicitly contracting for world wide ebook rights when they offer a contract to publish a book, precisely to get around those issues. But the vast majority of back catalog is issued under contracts that do not grant the publisher world wide rights. Some are issued under contracts written back before ebooks even existed. (There have been some interesting flaps as outfits noted this and decided to contract with the authors or author's estates to sell ebook editions. The existing publishers weren't happy, but their contracts did not
cover erights.)
In such cases, you see geo-restrictions, as the ebook publisher simply doesn't have the legal right to offer the book for sale where you are. What can they do about it? Not much, unless they can renegotiate the contract to get world wide erights. That may happen, but it will take time, and such efforts will be "top sellers first".
So you find yourself either resorting to proxy servers to hide your actual location when you make a purchase, or going to the darknet to get the book. The publishers are likely well aware that is happening, but there
is no quick fix. We are dealing with the legacy of a legal structure and contracts that did not envision ebooks or the internet.
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Dennis