[Mike L]

Originally Posted by KunoK

When you say that geographic restrictions apply equally to ebooks and traditional books, is this something you know?

You made some good points, Kunok. Let me try to answer them.

Geographic restrictions do apply to traditional books, and have done so for many years - long before ebooks were conceived. My understanding is that they were introduced by British publishers before World War II. Typically, the publisher would purchase "British and Empire rights". In practice, that meant that they could distribute the book anywhere in the English-speaking world, other than than the United States.

That was to the author's benefit, because in those days British publishers didn't have the infrastructure to distribute in the US. So the author was free to negotiate a separate deal with an American publisher. (In practice, the larger British publishers would often sell the US rights on the author's behalf, typically for a lump sum which was shared between author and publisher.)

Naturally, American publishers reciprocated, and purchased US rights from their authors, leaving the authors - or the agents - free to negotiate other rights elsewhere.

Nowadays, the biggest publishers are no longer British or American, but are global conglomerates. So the practice is less important than it was. But it does survive. (It enabled a tiny Scottish publisher to purchase the British rights to two books by an American politician named Barack Obama in 2009.) No doubt it will die out completely before long - or might even become illegal.

Originally Posted by KunoK

If I travel to London, I can go into a bookstore and buy any printed book they have. As far as I know, I am not sure but almost so, I can also order order a book from a London bookstore from back home, and have the friendly postman deliver it to my door in Denmark. I don't believe any geographic restrictions apply. It doesn't matter if a danish publisher holds the rights to sell a danish translation in Denmark, since I ordered it in London.

Clearly, the restrictions do not apply to in the case of a traveller buying a book in another country. The book is still being sold in the country where the rights are held. In any case, it would be impractical to enforce them in those circumstances. As I understand it, the restriction does apply in your "friendly postman" case, but is not in practice enforced. Again, there is no practical way in which it could be done, and it would not be worthwhile trying to do so. But with the growth in ebooks, and the fact that the technology allows them to be delivered to any country in the world, there is an incentive on the publisher to try to enforce it.

Originally Posted by KunoK

Please explain how it protects the author of a book, to prevent me from buying a copy of her book in an english bookstore, while allowing me to buy a danish translation of the book.

This has got nothing to do with translations. An author is free to sell the rights to translate a book into a particular language, regardless of any geographic restrictions on the original. When the author sells such rights, he typically receives a lump sum, rather than a royalty payment. If there is a demand for a Danish translation of the book, the author will benefit from that.

Originally Posted by KunoK

finallly the thing about "technicalities made up by lawyers or lawmakers who spend too much time creating problems for other people.", I put a "To my mind" in front of it, to indicate that it is an opinion, not a fact.

Yes, of course it is your opinion. The reason for my negative comment was ... well, just think about it. Lawyers might or might not spend time thinking up technicalities to "create problems for other people". But is likely that the likes of Macmillan and Random House and Penguin would actually pay their lawyers to do so? Why would they do that? Publishers and authors have the same goal: to make as much money as possible from their work. How does creating problems for other people help them achieve that goal?

I'm sorry this is such a long post. I hope I have answered your points. But I do stress: I am not defending geographic restrictions on ebooks. I am simply trying to explain the background to them.

Mike