Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
OK. The "edited highlights" version:
In most cases, a publisher buys the rights to sell a book in a particular country or region; eg many books have separate UK and US rights sold, for example. Under the terms of their contract, the publisher can only sell to retailers and customers in their region.
When you buy a book mail-order, you are considered (legally, I mean) to be buying it from the shop, no matter where you live. Thus Amazon UK can sell you books with UK only rights, even if you don't live in the UK, because the point of sale is considered to be Amazon UK themselves, in the UK.
With eBooks, as previously discussed, for whatever legal reason there might be (and we all agree that it's silly, but it is apparently legally binding) the point of sale is considered to be the customer's location, so an eBookstore in the UK cannot sell you an eBook that they have UK only right to unless you live in the UK.
Yes, it's silly. But that's the way it is.
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I agree its silly but...
What I havent seen answered is the question of taxes.
I mean if a sale is considered to be the location of the buyer (and this applies to all "software" - how anyone can class an ebook as software I dont know but there you go). So ignoring the actual ability to buy (or not) certain books, by classifying the sale as happening at the location of the purchaser, that surely means that the seller is responsible for taxes in whatever country/location the purchaser happens to be in for every individual sale. For larger companies (Apple/Amazon/etc) this is fine as they just re-direct to your local site and you make the purchase there and they file their taxes etc. How do smaller businesses deal with it? and presumably if the point of sale is at the purchasers location, then the seller doesnt have to pay sale taxes for that purchase at their current location either (must be a logistical/VAT/Sales Tax nightmare)!!
Mark