Thread: Buying an Ebook: In the real world
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Old 12-30-2009, 08:14 PM   #25
Pardoz
Which side are you on?
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Posts: 370
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Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Variable, currently Czestochowa, Poland.
Device: Kindle 2 Int'l
Quote:
Originally Posted by Robertb View Post
Maybe I can get something done or at least find out why not!!
The reason for geographic restriction's not a mystery: they exist because electronic book rights, in the vast majority of all book contracts, are an afterthought tossed into the stock contract. When electronic rights became an issue in the early 90s, boilerplate was added to standard contracts including electronic rights with paper rights. Since the standard in English-language paper publishing is to split rights trans-Atlantic (generally but not always US/Canada and UK/Commonwealth, with the odd exception like the one that made Raincoast Books a boatload of money when they realized nobody had picked up the Canadian rights to the Harry Potter books), electronic rights get split the same way.

For the current mess to be resolved, either contracts have to be changed (Magic 8-Ball says: "Outlook not so good") or the definition of 'location of sale' has to change.

In a nutshell - if I live in Poland, I fire up Opera (or Firefox or Internet Exploder), I log into Amazon-US, and I buy a paperback printed by a US publisher that only has rights to sell the book in the US, Amazon will happily sell it to me and put it in the mail. The sale is considered to have taken place in the US, in the warehouse where the book is stored. If I live in Poland, I fire up Opera (or Firefox or Internet Exploder), log into Amazon-US, and buy an electronic copy of the exact same edition of the same book from the same publisher from the Kindle store the sale is considered to have taken place...on my computer in Poland. As far as I know, there's absolutely no basis in law (and arguably very little basis in logic) for this assumption. There is, however, an argument based on brute force: "If you don't play by these rules, we (the publishers) will refuse to supply you with new product."
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