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Originally Posted by ApK
To confidential police records! Child pornograhy! And since it's moral and sensible, how about apply it to drugs! And weapons! And slaves!
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Now that's what I call a valuable contribution to the discussion ... not.
Believe it or not, we (read: some European countries, including mine) do pretty much just that for certain types of media already, the same way we acknowledge the right to make private copies under certain circumstances, or allow libraries to keep and make available to the public all published works. There are some financial transactions involved in return (blank media tax, mainly) but it all works out in the end.
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Originally Posted by eschwartz
It remains a right of the rights-holder to deny anyone the right to buy a product.
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Well, not necessarily. Copyright is by no means god-given, it is, on the contrary, a legally sanctioned monopoly granted by the state. It can be modified at any time. It is, in fact, every few years.
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It makes far more sense to make georestrictions legally unenforceable.
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Amazon.us still wouldn't sell (ebooks) to me: why should they, when they can levy a 40% (or so) "European" tax on amazon.{co.uk|de|it|*} ?
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Originally Posted by HarryT
Actually, one extremely important right that copyright law gives an author is the right NOT to publish. If you write a private diary, copyright is what gives you the right to keep it private. A rights holder absolutely does have the right to say "this is not for sale".
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Nobody questions this, but that's not the problem. Problems only arise when the author (or his agents, publishers, whoever) decide to publish in their home market only, and the rest of the world can take a running jump (or wait a few months at least to buy at twice the price.) This made sense (somewhat) when physical copies had to be printed and distributed, but these days the ebook is just a mouseclick away, regardless of my place of residence.
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Originally Posted by eschwartz
A rights-holder can pull their product from the market. ingmar's proposed legislation takes away that right by legalizing unauthorized copies if the rights-holder exercises that right.
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That's a valid point, but we have just such an exception for out-of-print books. You must not make copies of whole books (from a library, presumably) -- unless that book is out of print) [1]. I have no problems with just such an exceptions for ebooks as well. That said, it could be further clarified to only allow such copies if they are to be legally had in other markets.
[1] Or you copy it by hand. I kid you not.