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Originally Posted by djgreedo
I'm not American so I probably couldn't buy from Barnes and Noble if I wanted to, but the way these companies treat customers is really annoying me.
Technology makes it possible for anybody with access to the Internet to pay and download any book ever written (within reason) yet these companies cripple that technology to limit what can and can't be used on any given device. It's stupid.
The choice of books is limited to what device you want to read it on (and is affected by 'exclusives' and format limitations). This is really sad. Imagine if only DVDs from a certain film studio would work on your TV or if only CDs from certain artists worked in your CD player.
It's also stupid that I can buy a book off Amazon and have it shipped to Australia (at quite an extra cost to me) but I can't go on the Amazon ebook store (or Sony store) and buy the same book in electronic format and have it on my reader within minutes (and without an extra $10 for shipping) even though the technology is there.
On the bright side I've probably saved $100 this year so far on books I couldn't buy due to availability/format restrictions and Cory Doctorow has a new fan willing to pay for his books in future after having read some of his DRM-free stuff for free.
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They all want to try to make themselves the main hub by blocking out their competitors but if they were smart they would let everyone no matter what device you use download and read the books no matter if you want to read it on your phone, pc, Mac, eReader device or whatever. They purposefully limit their market which is just dumb. I understand there may be issues with publishers to sell internationally but to announce that you are not going to support certain competitive devices is just stupid, they should be trying to figure out a way to get their books to be read on the other devices so they aren't waiting for people to buy the new eReader to get some revenue. It amazes me how poorly these companies seem to be run in their eBook divisions.
