Quote:
Originally Posted by koland
Because it has nothing to do with laws, actually. It has to do with a contract between the author and the publisher (not the retailer), where the publisher has only been granted rights to publish in a specific country (and for ebooks, distribution = end user location). Those same rights get reflected out to the retailers (not just Amazon) and are enforced due to the author's restrictions (the author has the rights in other areas or has assigned them to someone else).
Also, you'll find that the laws on ebooks are also entirely different than for print books or any physical item (and the UK is it's own entity, despite being in the EU); Germany has price protection laws in effect (still, I believe) that take precedence, for example.
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Price protection is a different beast. Similarly, each country has different VAT rates for instance, but this is addressed in the EU treaties: you pay VAT where you buy, not where you live. This and price protection is acknowledged in the EU regulations. However, free trade in the EU is also a rule, which is independent from pricing. The rule is that as an EU resident, you buy anything where you want within the EU.
Now regarding the author's or publisher's restrictions: are they valid in the EU? Furthermore, can they be reinforced against the buyer? If not, not only Amazon has not the right to prevent an EU resident to buy in any Amazon outlet based in the EU (but not in the US, i.e. the .com site), but
a fortiori would not have the right to "punish" them on this basis. This is extremely muddy for Amazon to do this. Outside of the EU (USA, Norway), then this does not apply.