Quote:
Originally Posted by jbcohen
My understanding of geo-restrictions is that they ocurr for two reasons and neither are good reasons: first, the electronic book store wants to create sub-stores in individual nations and does not have one in the customer's country; and two some governments strictly sensor what books are available to its citizens, most noteably China, Iran and Pakistan. Geo-restrictions are used by a book store to comply with the local governments sensorship rules.
|
Geo restrictions occur in general because authors/agents sell print rights to publishers in various regions and ebook rights are almost always a requirement when a publisher acquires print rights. For print books there is seldom a problem buying the book from a shop in a given country and them shipping it to you, but for ebooks the point of sale is considered your computer and not the shops location so if you aren't in the country where a given publisher has rights they can't/wont sell to you.
Some publishers, such as Baen, acquire non-exclusive worldwide rights for ebooks and thus sell everywhere, but that's rare except for small/niche publishers.