Hachette Book Group causing major hassles

[Lemurion]

Amazon US can sell to UK customers because they are selling FROM the US where they do have the distribution rights - it's no different than if a Briton in New York walked into Borders and bought a book to take home. The seller sold the book in the territory where it's allowed to sell it.

Hachette seems to have decided the non-locality of the internet violates their agreements - and once that decision was made they had to take action.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

It's not a different arrangement.

Amazon or a physical bookstore buys books from a distributor (Amazon is its own distributor, actually). BooksonBoard also bought ebooks from distributors: Ingram Digital, Overdrive, and Mobipocket.

Yes, it IS a different arrangement. The fundamental difference is that in the one case Amazon is BUYING the books from the publisher (or wholesaler). They can then legally sell them to whoever they wish.

BoB (or any other eBook store) are NOT "buying books up front" from Ingram, Mobi, etc. - they don't have a "stock" of books which they've paid for and are waiting to sell to you. The transaction is only carried out at the time that the customer buys the book, and it's done directly by Ingram, Mobi, etc, via the BoB (or whatever) server. BoB then pays commission to the distributer for the transaction. ie it's a "direct sale". That is why, for example, you can't buy a Mobi book if Mobi's server is down at the time.

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes, it IS a different arrangement. The fundamental difference is that in the one case Amazon is BUYING the books from the publisher (or wholesaler). They can then legally sell them to whoever they wish.

The difference is that e-books are not sold whatever you may believe but licensed.

In the Kindle case, Amazon has the right to restrict selling Kindle to the US because they would be liable for warranty and even claims of limited functionality anywhere else - whispernet anyone? - and they just do not want the hassle and expense. But resellers can and do sell Kindles to anyone and everyone, just that you take your chances and accept the limited capability.

Try and resell Hachette ebooks and see what will happen...

Ebooks are not owned by anyone other then the publisher, they are licensed to you for a shorter or longer period of time and anyone pretending anything else is in denial if the belief is sincere...

The e-media examples of terminating the license by closing drm servers, pulling items off virtual shelves and so on are too numerous so far to list, so just live with it and do not whine

You "buy" ebooks, that's what you get, so accept it, make your own plans how to deal with it and forget it... Conversion and redundant backups is one way...

[Greg Anos]

Welcome to the world of Law...Like the punchline to the lost helicopter/Microsoft joke, it always give an answer that techncally correct, but may be completely meaningless...

All the country/zone legal agreements were based on the underlying concept of I'm here and you're there and it'll take far more effort for you to get the product from there that it's worth. Like tying the cost of violating a copyright to the plant and equipment cost for producing the physical product. With more to lose that there was to gain, it was self-enforcing. With the Web and Fed-Ex (et.al.) nowadays, the underlying concept is deader that a politician's conscience. You can buy and have delivered virtually anything from anywhere either instaneously (digital delivery) or 2-3 days (physical delivery). And that reality effectively negates country/zone agreements.

The right answer for Hatchette was as following. "We can't control zonal agreements any more. Nobody can. But what we can do is split up all the e-books into blocks for each region, each region getting exclusive control of it's block for the entire globe. What you lose for your former zonal agreement, you will make up in world-wide sales." Too much to expect, I suppose....

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

If Hatchette had tried the same thing with paper books, I wonder if it would be legal in the US?

Nate, it would be legal in the U.S. and has been legal forever here. This is a matter of contract between the author and the publisher, first, then down the chain.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes, it IS a different arrangement. The fundamental difference is that in the one case Amazon is BUYING the books from the publisher (or wholesaler). They can then legally sell them to whoever they wish.

BoB (or any other eBook store) are NOT "buying books up front" from Ingram, Mobi, etc. - they don't have a "stock" of books which they've paid for and are waiting to sell to you. The transaction is only carried out at the time that the customer buys the book, and it's done directly by Ingram, Mobi, etc, via the BoB (or whatever) server. BoB then pays commission to the distributer for the transaction. ie it's a "direct sale". That is why, for example, you can't buy a Mobi book if Mobi's server is down at the time.

It is not a direct sale. You have the term wrong. It cannot be a direct sale unless Ingram, Mobi, etc. is the one that processes the credit card charge. And the distributor doesn't get a fee at the time of transaction; it gets the fee monthly or quarterly.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

The difference is that e-books are not sold whatever you may believe but licensed.

In the Kindle case, Amazon has the right to restrict selling Kindle to the US because they would be liable for warranty and even claims of limited functionality anywhere else - whispernet anyone? - and they just do not want the hassle and expense. But resellers can and do sell Kindles to anyone and everyone, just that you take your chances and accept the limited capability.

Try and resell Hachette ebooks and see what will happen...

Ebooks are not owned by anyone other then the publisher, they are licensed to you for a shorter or longer period of time and anyone pretending anything else is in denial if the belief is sincere...

The e-media examples of terminating the license by closing drm servers, pulling items off virtual shelves and so on are too numerous so far to list, so just live with it and do not whine

How have I been whining?

You "buy" ebooks, that's what you get, so accept it, make your own plans how to deal with it and forget it... Conversion and redundant backups is one way...

I would like to say your statement was wrong, but it is actually less than complete.

You cannot assume in absolute terms that the ebook was licensed rather than sold because the assumption under US law is that a transaction is a sale, not a license. There are previous US Supreme Court decisions on this.

For a copyrighted work to be licensed but not sold, the fact that the transaction is not a sale needs to be made clear at the time it occurs. Last I checked, BoB does not do this.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by rhadin

Nate, it would be legal in the U.S. and has been legal forever here. This is a matter of contract between the author and the publisher, first, then down the chain.

I was thinking of something else when I wrote that. You are correct. Hatchette can decide who they want to do business with.

I was actually thinking about Hatchette trying to get that part of the contract enforced in a US court. I am fairly certain they would lose.

[Sweetpea]

Yeay, for a global economy...

I actually think actions like this will push people towards pirated books. I want to read book A, but I can't buy it (as it won't be sold in my region). So, as I really want to read that book A, I will look elsewhere...

[Wetdogeared]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Of course it's reasonable. If I sign a US-exclusive distribution deal with a publisher for my book, then that publisher is not permitted to sell my book outside the US, and it's down to a retailer to provide a mechanism for implementing that restriction - most eBook retailers do have such a mechanism in place.

Numerous products are sold "single country". Try buying a Kindle from Amazon if you live outside the US!

Yes, it is reasonable, although frustrating since I have several books on my wish list at the SOny eBook STore, but I can't buy them yet as they are listed as "US only".

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by HarryT

BoB (or any other eBook store) are NOT "buying books up front" from Ingram, Mobi, etc. - they don't have a "stock" of books which they've paid for and are waiting to sell to you.

So what? This seems like semantics to me Harry. Just because they don't buy the books ahead of time? They still BUY the book.. they just do it on demand.

BOb

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

How have I been whining?


I would like to say your statement was wrong, but it is actually less than complete.

You cannot assume in absolute terms that the ebook was licensed rather than sold because the assumption under US law is that a transaction is a sale, not a license. There are previous US Supreme Court decisions on this.

For a copyrighted work to be licensed but not sold, the fact that the transaction is not a sale needs to be made clear at the time it occurs. Last I checked, BoB does not do this.

Not sure who posted that, but calling for boycotts and such is just whining in my opinion.

We can quibble about the terms - and the legal terms for that matter - but for me "sell" means you can "resell". If there is one quality about "owning" is being able to dispose your property as you wish under some minimal general constraints. The other is being able to enjoy your property at will, again under some minimal general constraints.

Ebooks fail on count 1, drm-ebooks on count 1 and 2.

A physical book is a container for a licensed work, but it's yours since you can resell it, you can read it at your pleasure. An ebook is just the licensed work, so it's not truly yours....If it's drm-ed, you cannot even read it at your pleasure, but only on licensed devices - unless you convert and then we go again in the grau area of the DCMA, fair use and all that...

Regarding "world rights" and such, the bottom line about Hachette is that they want to have e-books for the US and UK with different pricing - I think UK gets screwed in the process, though with the pound tanking who knows - and that's their reason.

BD/Amazon.uk sells UK print editions to anyone indifferent of location, and Amazon.com sells US books to UK residents happily too, so this notion of segregating content by region is moot for print, though some editors and publishers still rail against it

For digital though they are trying to enforce it, with region videos, region iTunes and all that and you wonder why people go p2p, irc ...

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

Not sure who posted that, but calling for boycotts and such is just whining in my opinion.

We can quibble about the terms - and the legal terms for that matter - but for me "sell" means you can "resell". If there is one quality about "owning" is being able to dispose your property as you wish under some minimal general constraints. The other is being able to enjoy your property at will, again under some minimal general constraints.

Ebooks fail on count 1, drm-ebooks on count 1 and 2.

A physical book is a container for a licensed work, but it's yours since you can resell it, you can read it at your pleasure. An ebook is just the licensed work, so it's not truly yours....If it's drm-ed, you cannot even read it at your pleasure, but only on licensed devices - unless you convert and then we go again in the grau area of the DCMA, fair use and all that...

No it is not. You have fallen for a myth perpetrated by Big Content.

A copyright is not ownership of the content. It is a government granted monopoly over the reproduction and distribution of that content. There is a huge difference.

In the absence of the gov't granted monopoly, I can do whatever I want with the book.

And yes, you can resell an ebook. There is no real market for them yet, but you can still legally do it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

And yes, you can resell an ebook. There is no real market for them yet, but you can still legally do it.

That depends where you buy it from, Nate. Eg, eBooks bought from Fictionwise cannot be resold - this is clearly specified in the terms and conditions of the site, which you agree to follow by buying the book.

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

And yes, you can resell an ebook. There is no real market for them yet, but you can still legally do it.

Really?? Look at all the eBay cases involving software and how they turned out.

I do not doubt that you can TRY to resell ebooks - again I am talking about current copyrighted ones - but make sure you have a lawyer and deep pockets when the publishers will sue you. You may even win - some software eBay resellers won after all - but...

With a print book, I can list it on Amazon in under a minute for free and nobody is going to complain. Actually I even sold 3 or 4 used books on Amazon until I decided it's too much bother.

Regarding copyright, licensing and such, I agree with you that copyright is not perpetual ownership - knock on wood 3 times though, the way things are going - but it is a long term - getting longer - de facto ownership.

But nothing is perpetual ownership anyway since form of governments tend to go away across the centuries, laws change, so even countries change hands across centuries. At life + whatever is now (50, 75 yrs??) copyright is lasting more than quite a few systems of governments or countries

Sure the government may wave a wand tomorrow and decide all works go PD, but they may take your private property too also with a hand wave.