Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
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.
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No it is a matter of law. The Publisher cannot sell a book it is not licensed to sell. So the e-book is not available in Australia. If it were a paper book you can order the book online from Amazon US and it is mailed to you no problem. The law in the US says that the point of sale is Amazon's Warehouse so a book published in the US by a Publisher contracted to sell only in the US can be sold to someone in Australia.
Electronic Media is sold differently based on current law. The law says that the point of contact is your computer. If your computer is identified as being Australian you cannot buy an e-book published by a US Publisher from Amazon US because you are in Australia.
If the law is changed so that the point of sale for electronic media is the location of the server and not the location of your computer you should be able to by an e-book the same way you can buy the paper book.
This is the same silliness that caused increased VAT for many countries on electronic media because electronic media is dealt with differently legally then hard media. So E-books are taxed more heavily in many countries then the paper book.