Be good to have some Americans telling them they are losing sales, too, ascherjim. I'd like to see someone ask about it at an AGM, see what happens.
Why? The only reason I can work out is that their management is stuck in 1985.
Some companies have lawyers that are perfectly capable of working out contracts for nonexclusive worldwide rights. Not sure the Penguin variety would too bloody stupid to be able to do so - that doesn't make sense, so it has to be higher up mulishness.
It would seem that aggressively defending copyright territories for electronic material, apart from being silly, will reduce sales for everyone.
As mentioned, more people will turn to the free variety, and some of them will never pay again, ever, and some will just never contemplate buying that title, ever.
So lowering sales, and reducing the long term size of your market would not appear to be something you would generally want to advocate to capitalists, I believe.
Certainly an odd case of American companies not using their advantages.