Quote:
Originally Posted by ProfCrash
It might be absurd but it is not the fault of the stores. Complain to your government about the stupidity of the law.
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It's not a matter of law. Geo restrictions are a matter of contract agreements between publishers and distributors--bookstores aren't held by them (which is why Amazon can ship pbooks anywhere). Somewhere in the contract dealing, the publishers decided that a sale for digital content takes place at the location of the buyer, not the seller--and that "location" would be defined as "the address of the bank associated with the credit card" and/or "location defined by IP address," regardless of where the person actually is.
Geo restrictions have nothing to do with the buyer's location; a person living in the UK who visits the US on a vacation can't buy US-only ebooks through their Amazon account.
And there's no laws against selling ebooks to any location in the world--just contract arrangements; selling a publisher's books in places they haven't authorized them is breach of contract. It can be a breach of copyright law, if someone else owns the rights in that area--but a lot of geo restrictions are enforced by publishers who own international rights, but are hoping to set up contracts in other countries. They refuse to sell in order to offer those rights to the highest bidder.
There's no law that forbids bypassing geo restrictions, although it's maybe (probably?) a violation of the TOS of the seller, which means that if you get caught, your account can be frozen.