Quote:
Originally Posted by boswd
You also have to remember Amazon already has international licensing agreements already in place in Eurpope and elsewhere. which I'm sure was written into the language of the agreements as to being able to be allowed to sell it's US contents as well and vice versa.
Barnes and noble does not.
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But it doesn't really have anything to with licensing. Astak was happy to ship a PocketPro to my APO address. No worries about being licensed or not. They also shipped a fair number of them to Australia and New Zealand. The purchaser just had to spend a bit more on postage. If the PocketPro broke, it was just a matter of mailing it back for warranty service. Some countries had import duties, but that was between the purchaser and their own governments. I've heard the Dullin Books rep say the same thing about the PocketBooks.
BooksOnBoard, Sony, Baen, Fictionwise, Borders, and Amazon were all happy to sell books to me when I lived in Europe. I gave them a US credit card number with my APO address and could buy what I wanted. The only time I had to mask my IP was occasionally with Amazon. Their free promotional books cost 2 Euro from a German IP address and nothing from a US one. With Amazon, masking right before adding the item to the cart was sufficient. B&N would reject my purchase if I didn't have the IP masked before entering their store. That was even true for the free promotional books.
It took a lot of extra effort to do anything with B&N overseas. I have no doubt that it makes sense to them and is how they want to do business. It's fine for them to do as they think best for themselves. But until they change, I will continue to warn international purchasers about the obstacles they'll face if they choose B&N products. It's the sort of key information that you want to know before investing in your new device.