How are geographic restrictions affecting you?

[flexnib]

I wish I'd checked this forum before I tried to buy something off Diesel! That site doesn't indicate anywhere whether a title is going to be available or not. I am of course fully aware of geographic restrictions so I scrutinised their site carefully to see if I was going to be able to buy the title I wanted. I actually paid for the book, then when I went to download it, received a message that I was not in an "authorized territory". Hmmph. Lucky for Diesel their helpdesk is efficient and gave me a refund immediately. Of course, when I went to spend my refund, I had to email them first to check if the book would be downloadable.

P.S. If anyone can point me to a site where Australian readers can buy an epub copy of Halldor Laxness's Independent People, I'd be grateful

[sabredog]

Hi flexnib.

Did a quick look for you and found it here.

http://www.mobipocket.com/en/eBooks/...BookID=258863#

It will need conversion but you can get around geo restrictions. Seems it is restricted for those who live outside the US.

If you are keen PM me and I can help you out.

Good to see another Perthite on MR!

[eric11210]

Originally Posted by Fbone

I would imagine Israel is a difficult market to enter especially for US companies. They probably find it easier and less offensive to let local media companies handle it. With the Arab and Orthodox communities that equal perhaps 40% of Israel's population much US advertising would be wasteful and distasteful. Ads of beer, Hillshire Farms sausage, Smithfield ham, and car insurance companies that dont operate locally.

Just a warning. Completely off topic comment here:

The ads are in Hebrew so I imagine they're done locally, but I can't help but have laughed reading this. Yes, I imagine the media would give you the impression of Israel being a very religious and conservative country. And in some places, that's true, but the reality is that most Israeli made TV and most Israeli TV advertising is considerably more racy than their American counterparts. I don't bother with them anymore since (yes, I admit it -- I'm violating the DMCA) I use a VPN for access to Hulu and the like, but they had one show called the Fun Night Show which as near as I could tell was a talk show where they took any excuse they could to have a bunch of pretty girls who were wearing next to nothing do a sexy dance. And while the show was on around 9 or 10 PM, the ads for it ran throughout the day. And that's just one example of many. Actually, Tel Aviv was recently voted as one of the 10 hottest party cities in the world by Time Out.

Anyway, completely off topic but as I said, I had to laugh when I saw it because the impressions the media give are often very distorted. . .and no, I'm not trying to sound offensive. I realize what I wrote could sound that way so I figured I'd preempt it. I was just amused. . .

Eric

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by eric11210

The ads are in Hebrew so I imagine they're done locally, but I can't help but have laughed reading this. Yes, I imagine the media would give you the impression of Israel being a very religious and conservative country. And in some places, that's true, but the reality is that most Israeli made TV and most Israeli TV advertising is considerably more racy than their American counterparts.
Anyway, completely off topic but as I said, I had to laugh when I saw it because the impressions the media give are often very distorted. . .and no, I'm not trying to sound offensive. I realize what I wrote could sound that way so I figured I'd preempt it. I was just amused. . .

Eric

Thanks for the explanation. I get most of my Israel/Jewish info from the Lakewood, NJ community that I previously worked in. And most of them dont have TVs.

[eric11210]

Yeah, very different people. You'll find similar communities in parts of Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, but go to Tel Aviv and you'd swear you were in a completely different country.

[Ben Thornton]

I understand that the fact that books have been, and mostly still are, physically distributed, has meant that the rights are often a patchwork across the globe. What I don't understand is why the publishers don't appear to want to make money all the same. It is not beyond the wit of man to credit a different copyright holder with their share of the spoils based on where an ebook was sold. It reminds me a bit of the rail network in the UK, which is split into lots of different companies that operate different services and stations. Despite this, the customer just sees a process of buying a ticket from A to B with agreed pricing. The division of the proceeds happens behind the scenes.

The only reasons that I can see that the publishers wouldn't have got together with retailers - or Amazon at least - to sort this out, are: (1) too small a market to bother, or (2) they don't want ebooks to succeed.

[flexnib]

Hi sabredog (nice to see a fellow Perthan), thanks for looking for me, but um, that link says that the book is not available to Australians

I am starting to think I will just have to look for a paper version at the forthcoming Save the Children sale

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by Ben Thornton

I understand that the fact that books have been, and mostly still are, physically distributed, has meant that the rights are often a patchwork across the globe. What I don't understand is why the publishers don't appear to want to make money all the same. It is not beyond the wit of man to credit a different copyright holder with their share of the spoils based on where an ebook was sold. It reminds me a bit of the rail network in the UK, which is split into lots of different companies that operate different services and stations. Despite this, the customer just sees a process of buying a ticket from A to B with agreed pricing. The division of the proceeds happens behind the scenes.

The only reasons that I can see that the publishers wouldn't have got together with retailers - or Amazon at least - to sort this out, are: (1) too small a market to bother, or (2) they don't want ebooks to succeed.

Not you missed another reason. They lack the skills or smarts to do it. Amazon is clearly capable.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by flexnib

I wish I'd checked this forum before I tried to buy something off Diesel! That site doesn't indicate anywhere whether a title is going to be available or not. I am of course fully aware of geographic restrictions so I scrutinised their site carefully to see if I was going to be able to buy the title I wanted. I actually paid for the book, then when I went to download it, received a message that I was not in an "authorized territory". Hmmph. Lucky for Diesel their helpdesk is efficient and gave me a refund immediately. Of course, when I went to spend my refund, I had to email them first to check if the book would be downloadable.

P.S. If anyone can point me to a site where Australian readers can buy an epub copy of Halldor Laxness's Independent People, I'd be grateful

I can't confirm Geo Restrictions on this list - but feel free to have a look Addall.com

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by Ben Thornton

I understand that the fact that books have been, and mostly still are, physically distributed, has meant that the rights are often a patchwork across the globe. What I don't understand is why the publishers don't appear to want to make money all the same. It is not beyond the wit of man to credit a different copyright holder with their share of the spoils based on where an ebook was sold. It reminds me a bit of the rail network in the UK, which is split into lots of different companies that operate different services and stations. Despite this, the customer just sees a process of buying a ticket from A to B with agreed pricing. The division of the proceeds happens behind the scenes.

The only reasons that I can see that the publishers wouldn't have got together with retailers - or Amazon at least - to sort this out, are: (1) too small a market to bother, or (2) they don't want ebooks to succeed.

I think it's a failure to recognize how serious of a problem it is. From what I've seen they think it's just a nuisance that people will have to deal with. They understand that ebooks are different when people start talking about reselling them, but they refuse to see them as different for geographic restrictions. I'm convinced they'll lose more money through geo restrictions then to piracy but it's easier to blame the evil boogie man then your own stupidity.

The large retailers (Amazon, Apple, Sony) are happy to keep geo restrictions because it keeps the small retailers out of the competition.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

I can't confirm Geo Restrictions on this list - but feel free to have a look Addall.com

I recently discovered addall, thanks to a link here on MR, and I have to say it's a great tool, better than Inkmesh, which I was using before. You can customize the search to ignore the shops that you know you can't or won't buy from, and it includes more non-US stores than inkmesh. I think it can be a great help (though of course it would be even better if you could display geographical availability in the search results).

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Barcey

The large retailers (Amazon, Apple, Sony) are happy to keep geo restrictions because it keeps the small retailers out of the competition.

Your annoyance is a little misdirected. Sony and Apple - yes, they have georestricted sites - but Amazon do not. Anyone can buy eBooks from Amazon.com; if there are georestrictions on Amazon books they are specified by the supplier of the book, not by Amazon.

The ultimate blame has to be assigned to authors for signing country-specific distribution contracts, rather than assigning world-wide rights to a single publisher. If a publisher only has distribution rights for a specific country or region, then they cannot legally sell outside that.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The ultimate blame has to be assigned to authors for signing country-specific distribution contracts, rather than assigning world-wide rights to a single publisher.

I'd rather place the blame on whoever decided that for electronic goods the "place of sale" was to be the purcharer's computer, which then leads to credit-card-address tests, which check something entirely different.

The same "geographic restrictions" have existed for paper books for long, and that just meant you had to go to amazon.com to buy American editions or to amazon.co.uk to buy British editions, but I could get either from Spain, and pay whatever publisher had the rights... But with ebooks I cannot buy any one. The problem is not geographic restrictions per se, it's the way they are implemented.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The ultimate blame has to be assigned to authors for signing country-specific distribution contracts, rather than assigning world-wide rights to a single publisher. If a publisher only has distribution rights for a specific country or region, then they cannot legally sell outside that.

Eh. Authors earn more money not using world wide right. So the ultimate blame has to be assigned the publishers that created this situation.

[Blue Tyson]

Some authors will - those that can manage to make sales to more than one area.

Those that can't obviously make less.