Kindle Geographic Restrictions On US Website - Against US Buyers

[Solicitous]

Originally Posted by meraxes

No-one's denying your right to have an opinion. And in my case the author has been paid, cause I own six of his books in paperback. I just wanted to have one of those in electronic format so as not to lug the volumes around when I'm travelling. But his publishers said they don't want my money, so what can I do...

As for equating piracy with stealing - that is a simplistic argument designed to engage emotions rather than logic. Proper stealing is when you take something from the owner, and as a result he doesn't have this thing any more, ending up poorer than he was. Piracy is merely a lost opportunity for profit, based on an imperfect business model. Now, if that opportunity was lost because the pirate deliberately chooses not to reward the author for his work, that's clearly wrong. Not quite stealing, but freeriding at the very least, and denying the author his just rewards out of greed. But if that opportunity was never created by the publishers in the first place, if the pirate wanted to pay his money like everyone else but was rejected due to idiotic business practices, whose fault is that? No-one's ended up poorer than they were. The author has not of course become richer, but only because his publishers have wasted an opportunity to make a profit for themselves and for the author. But instead of fixing their broken business model they are trying to shift the blame for lost profit on their potential customers and send them on a guilt trip through emotionally loaded verbiage.

I could not have said it better myself. It is sad when you are able and willing to buy an ebook but are declined on the basis of your geographic location - despite you being able to buy internationally the paperback from the same publisher and have it shipped to your home without question.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

That's nice. The law says unauthorised copying is a civil offence and theft is a criminal offence. Every time you say theft, I'll immediately ignore the rest of your argument and home in on the that, because it's blatent misrepresentation and makes your argument - regardless what it is - a bad joke.

You can continue to do whatever you want, believe whatever you want, but it does not change the facts or the act.

If you take something of mine without my permission, that is theft.

[meraxes]

Originally Posted by kennyc

If you take something that belongs to me without my permission, that is theft.

The music industry et al. would like to brainwash everyone into thinking there's exactly the same public consensus about intellectual piracy, which in its current form goes back a mere generation, as about theft, which has been anathema since time immemorial. There isn't.

If I take your car, you'll be left without a car. If I read something your wrote without your permission, you won't even know it. You won't be any worse off than you were before I read your work. So most people just don't think of it as "theft", no matter what the music industry says. It's unfair, but it's not theft.

Now, to prevent this unfairness, and to keep the artists and writers going, you have to stop pretending that it's still the 19th century. You can't enforce your ownership of intangible ebooks or mp3 tracks the way you could with tangible vinyl records or paper books, not on the end-user level anyway. And if you don't control something in the first place, it cannot be "stolen" from you. It can however be used by someone without you receiving your just reward as the author. So instead of throwing up all kinds of anticompetitive restrictions in an effort to milk the consumer dry, you need to make sure I actually CAN and WANT to reward you for your work, and that the required size of the reward is generally perceived as fair, equitable and worth paying. What we have instead is copyright holders, publishers and distributors in a state of denial, pretending that their hysterics about piracy will uninvent the Internet, making it as difficult as possible for consumers to reward the writers and artists, and making a mockery of "fair and equitable" by their discriminatory restrictions and pricing policies.

[CommanderROR]

@kennyc

I'm afraid I'll have to dispute you car analogy. If I steal your car then I steal your car. It's there, so it can be stolen. The ebook version of whatever I'd like to read is not actually there at all.
To make the analogy work I would have to phrase it like this:

I see a picture of your car and I like it. Sadly the car is in Australia and I can't buy it from there. Luckily I know somebody who builds cars in his free time. I show him the picture of the car and he constructs one just like it and gives it to me for free...

Physical Theft and so-called piracy is very hard to compare as meraxes correctly points out. That is why the analogy I constructed above sounds extremely silly...

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by CommanderROR

@kennyc
..

Physical Theft and so-called piracy is very hard to compare as ...

try just a little bit harder and you might get it yet.

It really doesn't matter if it's a physical object I own or an item of intellectual property. If you take it without permission, that is stealing.

[CommanderROR]

It is unlawful, that is true, but apart from that I see very little similarity...^^

I'm not claiming that pirating ebooks is OK, according to the law, morals and so on it most definitely is not.
However, the meaning of the word "theft" and "piracy" has to be stretched quite a bit to fit the bill here.

I'll try one more time:

If I go to a shop and steal a CD then it is theft, the CD is gone and the publisher and artist lose money.
If I go to a shop, unpack my Laptop, copy a CD and then don't buy it that is also a type of Theft. The CD is still there, publisher and artist don't lose any money but don't earn any either. It's a (theoretical) loss of profit since I could have bought the CD.
If I go to a shop and ask for a CD and the shopowner tells me he won't sell it to me, I then go home and download the content of the CD and keep it on my computer or burn it onto a CD I would not call it theft.
The reasons are as follows:

1.) The item is not gone, so no physical theft took place. Nobody loses money.
2.) The item was not for sale anyway so nobody loses profit.

If nobody loses anything, how can it be Theft? In a regulary Software/Music/ebook/DVD/Whatever piracy situation there is at least a theoretical loss of profit, because the pirate could have possibly been tempted to buy the item he downloaded for free had it not been available as pirated copy.
In the case of geo-restricted material however, it would seem that it is more a case of unauthorized import than of theft...
Maybe I'm completely mistaken, I'm pretty sure a lawyer would see things differently, but sound logic seems to imply that in this case there can be no theft since there is no contraband and nobody loses anything...

[kennyc]

As I said above.....

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by CommanderROR

It is unlawful, that is true, but apart from that I see very little similarity...^^

I'm not claiming that pirating ebooks is OK, according to the law, morals and so on it most definitely is not.
However, the meaning of the word "theft" and "piracy" has to be stretched quite a bit to fit the bill here.

I'll try one more time:

If I go to a shop and steal a CD then it is theft, the CD is gone and the publisher and artist lose money.
If I go to a shop, unpack my Laptop, copy a CD and then don't buy it that is also a type of Theft. The CD is still there, publisher and artist don't lose any money but don't earn any either. It's a (theoretical) loss of profit since I could have bought the CD.
If I go to a shop and ask for a CD and the shopowner tells me he won't sell it to me, I then go home and download the content of the CD and keep it on my computer or burn it onto a CD I would not call it theft.
The reasons are as follows:

1.) The item is not gone, so no physical theft took place. Nobody loses money.
2.) The item was not for sale anyway so nobody loses profit.

If nobody loses anything, how can it be Theft? In a regulary Software/Music/ebook/DVD/Whatever piracy situation there is at least a theoretical loss of profit, because the pirate could have possibly been tempted to buy the item he downloaded for free had it not been available as pirated copy.
In the case of geo-restricted material however, it would seem that it is more a case of unauthorized import than of theft...
Maybe I'm completely mistaken, I'm pretty sure a lawyer would see things differently, but sound logic seems to imply that in this case there can be no theft since there is no contraband and nobody loses anything...

So let me make another example. You give me that great manuscript you have written for your new book. I copy it and immediately give it to a publisher and I become the next Dan Brown, making millions. I have returned your copy, so by your logic I have not stolen from you? You haven't lost anything, as you would argue.

[Solicitous]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

So let me make another example. You give me that great manuscript you have written for your new book. I copy it and immediately give it to a publisher and I become the next Dan Brown, making millions. I have returned your copy, so by your logic I have not stolen from you? You haven't lost anything, as you would argue.

That in itself is stealing. But if I had a manuscript for sale and I was selling copies to people, but excluded you because of the street you lived in (aka geographic restrictions) and you found a copy and photocopied it....well in theory you are stealing, but it was an act you performed initiated by me by discriminating against you refusing to sell to you.

Personally my feeling is, if I am able and willing to purchase an ebook, and the sale is being refused because of my location....well I don't feel too bad (if at all) about acquiring a copy from somewhere. If a publisher will quite happily allow me to buy internationally and have delivered to my door the paperback version of a book but say no to me for an ebook copy....well they are missing out due to their actions.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Solicitous

That in itself is stealing. But if I had a manuscript for sale and I was selling copies to people, but excluded you because of the street you lived in (aka geographic restrictions) and you found a copy and photocopied it....well in theory you are stealing, but it was an act you performed initiated by me by discriminating against you refusing to sell to you.

Personally my feeling is, if I am able and willing to purchase an ebook, and the sale is being refused because of my location....well I don't feel too bad (if at all) about acquiring a copy from somewhere. If a publisher will quite happily allow me to buy internationally and have delivered to my door the paperback version of a book but say no to me for an ebook copy....well they are missing out due to their actions.

According to CommanderROR it wouldn't be stealing. Your view is much too simplistic, you tweak it just so that you can do what you want and others can't do the same onto you. If publishers had only one price worldwide and US sellers could sell to anyone then in the end only US sellers would survive. And an international trade war would break out over lost tax revenue and distribution of possibly censored books. You can easily find that book elsewhere (probably you would have to pay a little bit more) you just want it for free.

[Blue Tyson]

Don't think so. US sellers might get to be be the biggest (already are, anyway). They certainly aren't going to compete very well with French, German, Japanese, Chinese, etc. sellers.

They'll cause the poms and Australians or kiwis etc. a few problems - which might leave them sellling more of the books that the yanks don't sell, but hardly is going to kill them all off.

It may diminish those who have a large percentage of their business repackaging or importing yank books and marking them up a lot - but so what? American companies have crushed those in other industries before, and will again.

[HappyMartin]

The root of the stealing versus piracy debate seems to be a fundamental disagreement of what constitutes theft.

My definition based on my belief system is that stealing is taking that which is not offered. By my personal beliefs piracy is stealing. My beliefs are not based on being brain washed by large corporations in order to protect their profits as has been suggested in this thread.

We will never get anywhere close to resolving the "is piracy theft" issue unless we first agree on what constitutes theft

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

Don't think so. US sellers might get to be be the biggest (already are, anyway). They certainly aren't going to compete very well with French, German, Japanese, Chinese, etc. sellers.

They'll cause the poms and Australians or kiwis etc. a few problems - which might leave them sellling more of the books that the yanks don't sell, but hardly is going to kill them all off.

It may diminish those who have a large percentage of their business repackaging or importing yank books and marking them up a lot - but so what? American companies have crushed those in other industries before, and will again.

Don't get me wrong, I would love it if there were no regional restrictions, since I have to go to great lengths to avoid them now. My point was that in the end the cheapest price will win. And for the moment, Amazon is in the best position because they have the lowest cost (they can pressure publishers). In countries like China few, if anybody, are paying for any downloads (except by having their computer added to the worldwide spam zombie network). And it will be years before that changes. Anyway, I was referring to the worldwide market for English books.

[meraxes]

Originally Posted by HappyMartin

The root of the stealing versus piracy debate seems to be a fundamental disagreement of what constitutes theft.

I think it's rather a disagreement over what constitutes ownership. And whether intangible ideas - which is what books and songs and videos, without their obsolete physical media, are in the end - can be "owned". I don't think they can, because that ownership cannot be enforced, not on the level of billions of end-users. And a rule that cannot be enforced is useless. An astronomer might just as well claim ownership of a planet he's discovered - but other people will look at it for free, and there's nothing he can do to stop it, so this concept of "ownership" is useless in this case.

Which is why instead of the dysfunctional concept of "buying the idea from its author" we should be thinking about "rewarding the author for his idea". In those cases where this rewarding can be done through the usual mechanisms which imply "ownership" (such as patent right) - carry on by all means, no better mechanism has been discovered as yet. But in the case of music and books and videos, the old "ownership" model has plainly run out of steam and no longer serves its purpose. That should be recognized and a new business model should be created, instead of wasting billions on propping up the hopeless old one. It should be based on an easy, fair and equitable mechanism of rewarding the author, or on selling easy and convenient access to a complete library of titles rather than the actual "right" to view or read or listen to these titles. There's no point carrying on with feeble attempts to lock intangible ideas in drm cells in this digital age, or trying to make billions of end users abide by unenforceable copyright rules using this tired "piracy is theft" mantra. The problem is an obsolete and broken business model, not theft.

[meraxes]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

If publishers had only one price worldwide and US sellers could sell to anyone then in the end only US sellers would survive.

No, the non-US sellers would be forced to compete with US sellers and become as efficient as Amazon US, bringing down prices and offering better service for the benefit of consumers worldwide.

Originally Posted by HansTWN

And an international trade war would break out over lost tax revenue and distribution of possibly censored books

No trade wars will break out because they are not winnable. Governments will simply be forced to review the taxing policies that put the sellers in their country at a disadvantage. As for the "censored books", let the Chinese worry about that. I elected my government to run the police and public services, not to tell me which books I'm allowed to read.