Do you misrepresent your address to buy ebooks?

[patrickt]

When I moved to Colorado and got a job I was instantly a resident for the purposes of being assessed taxes. After thirty days I was a resident for the purpose of a drivers license and plates for my car. I had to wait a year--perhaps two--to be a resident for the purpose of getting a fishing license. I live in Mexico, now, but I am still a resident of Colorado for the purpsoes of voting in national elections. So, tell me what my address would be for the purpose of buying books. My bank is in the U.S. and my billing address is a home in Tennessee. For Amazon, that makes me a resident of Tennessee for the purposes of paying sales tax for books bought.

I wonder when lawyers and politicians will realize that national boundaries are becoming more and more meaningless for real people.

[murg]

Originally Posted by patrickt

I live in Mexico, now

Make sure you file a FBAR!

[miguel1626]

I tried to buy my first kindle book using my Brazilian address. Amazon added a $2 surcharge to the book (no idea if they still do it). So I used an US hotel address and a proxy to make my purchase - and I've never looked back. All my books are purchased with that US address.

On a few occasions, I also had to use a fake UK address in order to get around georestrictions (e.g. a few Stephen King books are only available as ebooks on the Amazon UK).

[pdurrant]

Used to. Just can't be bothered any more.

[abookreader]

I've done it for both price advantage and geo-restrictions.
It isn't difficult.

Cheating?

Okay, if somebody wants to call me a cheater because I bought a book, whatever. Frankly, as has been pointed out - I could steal easier than I can buy it at times. Publishing dudes should be happy I'm willing to go to the effort to "cheat" since it means a sale for them.

[Yapyap]

I do on a semi-regular basis. I used to do it only when something wasn't available otherwise, but, well, now I also do it when there's a special offer on a book I might want (am curious about, but not enough to have bought it before) - like $0.99-$2.99 for Americans, while it's still $12 for me otherwise.

And after realising that, say, if I pretended to live in Austria instead, the overwhelming majority of ebooks in my Amazon.com wishlist suddenly turned $3-4 cheaper, I've been having a hard time buying with my actual address. As the owner of a Wi-Fi only Kindle (i.e. I don't see that I'm costing Amazon any particularly massive Whispernet transfer fees), I don't much appreciate that $2 Amazon surcharge.

If geo-restrictions didn't exist, I'd never have got the desire to look into how I could circumvent them, and would probably still be paying much higher prices for everything... it's definitely been a slippery slope.

[miguel1626]

Originally Posted by abookreader

Okay, if somebody wants to call me a cheater because I bought a book, whatever. Frankly, as has been pointed out - I could steal easier than I can buy it at times. Publishing dudes should be happy I'm willing to go to the effort to "cheat" since it means a sale for them.

Indeed, if there was no workaround regarding georestrictions (when the book is unavailable outside a certain country), I'd promptly download it from the first shady website available

As it is, I feel better circumventing the georestriction but actually paying for the book. Authors, publishers and Amazon should be happy about this.

EDIT: I just bought Bruce Schneier's Liars and Outliers using my fake US address. I guess that's only fitting

[CarolineNH]

I voted No, I've never needed to... Truth is, I probably wouldn't bother. If I couldn't get something as an e-book, I would probably not take the time to figure out how to spoof my address. I'd be more likely to try to get it from the library, or just wait and see if it comes out in ebook form at some point in the future.

[sufue]

And, so what about the reverse - when you live in one country, but are on a trip to another country, and STILL have a hard time trying to buy e-books (legitimately) that are geo-restricted to the "being-visited" country.

As I described in some other thread a long time ago, I went through this last summer, when we visited Canada, and I wanted to buy some e-books available in Canada, but not in the US.

Amazon simply refused - they told me right up front that even if I was in Canada, my US billing address meant I was still considered a US customer. I suspect Amazon employees would flunk Geography 101.

B&N said before my trip that their system would recognize my temporarily Canadian IP address, and let me buy, but that didn't turn out to be true. I could see the Canadian-restricted books only until I logged into the B&N site to actually buy, and then it dumped me back to US books.

Kobo also said their system would would recognize my temporarily Canadian IP address, and let me buy, but that didn't turn out to be true either. Just like B&N, as soon as I logged in, it went back to US books only. They did suggest that I use a gift card to buy, but I wasn't near any place I could buy a gift card, so finally with Kobo, I just gritted my teeth, changed my account/billing address to our hotel's address (the first true, if temporarily, the second obviously not), entered my US credit card number and info, and it worked! Woo-hoo! Yee-ha!

Just like Melmac says, though, it's a bit shocking, if not downright scary!

Originally Posted by melmac

I must say I was very shocked that most places do not match the credit card address's I really thought that they would. Both the Sony store and Barnes & Noble allow my Australian credit card which is an Amex with an Australian Bank to be used even though in my account I have listed that I'm from Alaska. I thought that the bank would reject the charges but they don't I suppose they just check that the name/number and expiry is correct.

In all fairness to B&N, this approach might have worked on their site too, but by then, I was just too tired to try, and had already bought the few books I wanted anyway.

As several have already said - it just goes to show how absurd geo-restrictions are in a digital world.

[HansTWN]

As much as I hate them, geo-restrictions probably won't be going away soon. But same as with DRM, I am just glad it is so easy to circumvent and move on.

It really would make sense to at least allow sellers in one country to sell to other countries where nobody has a contract for that particular book in English.

And Suefue, instead of that trip to Canada, I suggest a trip to the Amazon website's "change country" selection button. I have bought books available in the UK only this way -- or significantly cheaper in the UK than in the US. My guess is that you shouldn't overdue this, though.

[pdurrant]

Georestrictions wil only start to go away when authors, agents and publishers all recognise that the only sensible contract term for ebooks is world-wide, language-specific, non-exclusive. (Or possibly exclusive, if world-wide, language-specific print rights are also granted.)

[geenp]

I haven't done it yet but I know misrepresentation is wrong. Having said that, I would have no qualms about lying if it enabled me to get the books that I want. The relevant people still get their cut of the money.

I just think the idea of restricting access to books is ridiculous. I don't agree with the concept of different licensing agreements for the different territories but that isn't the only problem, some books just can't be bought from certain locations.

My only problem with the whole arrangement would be if the publishers then looked at sales statistics saw that all the sales were coming from certain countries, almost none from others and felt that the current system was working.

[ProfCrash]

Since the Publishers with the rights, or the author, have decided not to make the e-book available in certain countries they are already seeing that there are zero e-book sales. The only way to potentially impact the sale of the e-book in a country where it is not for sale is to write the author or the Publisher.

You are inflating the sales from one country but not deflating the sales from your country. No biggie.

Heck I would argue that people who do this to get the e-book at a substantially less expensive price are fine. They are showing that there is a greater demand for the cheaper version and help influence pricing in other locations.

[Bittybye]

No, like others I won't give money to publishers who would deny a costumer who is willing to pay. Thankfully the only book I really wanted to read that wasn't available to Canada is now. But it was a book that when my aunt came to visit she let me borrow her Nook so I could read the book and it's sequels.

I honestly don't understand why publishers geo restrict. It just pushes people (who would ordinarily pay for the boo) to the darknet. Could anyone explain why they do this?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Bittybye

I honestly don't understand why publishers geo restrict. It just pushes people (who would ordinarily pay for the boo) to the darknet. Could anyone explain why they do this?

Publishers don't want to pay authors for exclusive world-wide ebook rights when they're only buying exclusive regional print rights and/or authors&agents aren't willing to sell non-exclusive world-wide ebook rights together with exclusive regional print rights.

The other reason for regional restrictions are international agreements that point of sale is the customer's billing address, not the retailer's offices.