I know it has been discussed to death, but I still haven't found a reasonable explanation. I (kind of) understand geographic restrictions, in that authors may sell distribution rights of their books to two or more publishers, each exclusively responsible for a region (or something like that). Silly and frustrating in the age of the internet, but there you go.
My question is, how can there be such restrictions inside the European Union? Wasn't the Union supposed to be all about free commerce among its members? Plus, correct me if I'm wrong, but the UK and Ireland are the only english-speaking countries inside the EU. So who would want exclusive distribution rights for say, Germany, or Greece, for an english-language book? For the few handfuls that will want to read the original instead of the translation?
All of this was triggered when I recently realized that some books in WHSmith, like Tolkien's, are only available in the UK. I can't get my head around this. Please tell me there is some logic behind all this that I'm missing. (and excuse the ranting
)
And a secondary question that may or may not be relevant.
I bought my prs-505 from Waterstones while I was in Greece, no problems.
Now the site informs me that the sony readers are only available for UK and Ireland customers. Sony Greece does not sell readers, and I don't see any clues that Sony UK send their products worldwide. In whose interests could this restriction be? And since it's a physical product, point of sale is the waterstones store, so what could be the problem? (sorry, I seem to go on and on. I'll shut up now - maybe all this should go to the vent and rant thread instead?)