Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyMartin
I just signed up at cyberread. At least I can buy what I see. I have found that the restrictions are very unevenly applied and if I look at enough stores and formats I will eventualy find what I am looking for.
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It's probably not that the GR are unevenly applied, it seems more likely (to me) that different stores obtain their ebooks from different publishers. And that's the whole basis behind the GR, don't you know? You sell the same book to multiple publishers, giving them exclusive rights to a given region. So, the secret to obtaining a book is to find the publisher in your region that has the rights to it. (And the problem is that 1) sometimes no publisher in your region has bought the rights to it and 2) sometimes the publisher with the rights to your region doesn't offer it as an ebook, or only offers it in an ebook format not suitable for your reader.)
It's also possible that you're right & some stores are more strict than others in enforcing GR. But with the current push by publishers to get GR enforced, I think that'll change. Stores will either start enforcing them or publishers will stop allowing them to sell their books.
This isn't exclusive to ebooks, by the way. It's just easier to enforce due to DRM. Some goods manufacturers grant exclusive geographic rights to dealerships. That doesn't prevent competition, it's just that the competitors must either buy from that dealership or find a cooperative dealer elsewhere (and if the manufacturer can track down the cooperative dealer the dealer sometimes loses their franchise-depends on the dealership contract whether or not the manufacturer can limit who they sell to).
It'd be interesting for somebody who wanted to challenge the law to establish a 'used ebook' store. Legally purchase the ebooks (probably from users) then strip the DRM (and probably replace it, when they resell the books, to keep the inevitable lawsuits limited to only the 'reselling' issue).
After all the harping by publishers that ebooks should be treated 'just like a physical book' (i.e. not copied) it'd be ironic to see them suing somebody for treating ebooks 'just like a physical book'. But it'd still mean getting involved in a lawsuit which is probably why nobody has done it. Once something gets into the courts it's hard to tell what will happen-except that the lawyers will always make their money.