Kindle Geographic Restrictions On US Website - Against US Buyers

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Olympus

- let publishers compete on quality and price - not on the contracts they are able to manufacture to split the world

I agree completely with this, but unfortunately the history of the industry and the political boundaries, laws, taxes, etc. are all in the way.

This issue really isn't any different than any other foreign trade issue. Trade restrictions, vats, taxes, agreements etc. etc. etc.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Then introduce compulsory licensing, in say... 2 years, if there's no other licence then anyone will be able to sell for a set price, with a certain percentage going to the author via a collection society.

I think you'd find that the "barriers" to publishers getting contracts in various countries would vanish with remarkable speed.

I think maybe you should get involved and get to work in the publishing industry then.

[meraxes]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Unfortunately those existing contracts - ill-fitting as they are to the world of e-books - do currently exist,

No, it's actually new contracts. Which the publishers have deliberately negotiated in such a way as to effectively say "you can't sell to Europeans/Asians/Americans because we think we can herd those nationals into a separate shop where we can squeeze more money out of them". Mind you, they are not saying "you can't sell in Europe", (which in itself bears all the hallmarks of a cartel agreement, where dishonest merchants divide the market so as not to compete against each other). They are actually saying "you can't sell to Europeans". Which is outright discriminatory and illegal.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by meraxes

Mind you, they are not saying "you can't sell in Europe", (which in itself bears all the hallmarks of a cartel agreement, where dishonest merchants divide the market so as not to compete against each other). They are actually saying "you can't sell to Europeans". Which is outright discriminatory and illegal.

No, that is incorrect. It is a GEOGRAPHICAL restriction, not a NATIONALITY restriction. It's dependent purely on your geographical location; if I visit the USA, then while I'm in the USA, FictionWise (or whoever) will happily sell me US-only books.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No, that is incorrect. It is a GEOGRAPHICAL restriction, not a NATIONALITY restriction. It's dependent purely on your geographical location; if I visit the USA, then while I'm in the USA, FictionWise (or whoever) will happily sell me US-only books.

Without commenting on the bias-by-country thing directly, that's not entirely true Harry. Many of the geolocation checks are for the country your credit card is issued in, not (or as well as) your current location.

[HarryT]

But many sites will offer you alternate methods of payment that do not involve credit cards. I was referring to the IP location checks that most such sites now do; they check WHERE you are, not what nationality you are.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But many sites will offer you alternate methods of payment that do not involve credit cards.

Equally, with ereader DRM you have to enter a credit card number anyway.

[meraxes]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It is a GEOGRAPHICAL restriction, not a NATIONALITY restriction. It's dependent purely on your geographical location; if I visit the USA, then while I'm in the USA, FictionWise (or whoever) will happily sell me US-only books.

No it isn't.

First, geographical location is entirely irrelevant for electronic delivery, so it's no-one's business where I am.

Second, Amazon's Audible, for example, would refuse to sell me a US-only book even if I was standing on the doorstep of its US headquarters. As soon as it sees that my credit card's billing address is in the UK, it figures that I'm from the UK and automatically redirects me to the UK site. \

Third, Amazon itself shows my current region as Europe and US-only Kindle for PC books are not available to me. Nowhere does it explain that there's a "change region" loophole, and people who aren't obsessed enough about this issue and who don't read forums like this one would never even know about it. And in any case, I need a VALID US address to change region. Where would a Canadian who's crossed the border for a one-day shopping trip get a valid US address with a zip code? Why should a visiting Canadian be denied the right to be served just like everyone else? Or are visiting foreigners kicked out of every US shop inless they have use of a valid US address with a zip code?

[CommanderROR]

Actually, this is getting increasingly interesting...

This quote

"Federal laws prohibit discrimination based on a person's national origin, race, color, religion, disability, sex, and familial status. Laws prohibiting national origin discrimination make it illegal to discriminate because of a person's birthplace, ancestry, culture or language. This means people cannot be denied equal opportunity because they or their family are from another country..."

That meraxes posted seems pretty clear to me. So, if somebody decides to sue, they should just be able to quote the above and would win. Of course, in reality it would not be so easy, but it's a good starting point. It might also be a good starting point to attack the silly import VAT stuff they give us on physical goods here in Germany.
As much as I respect companies trying to protect themselves from imports ruining prices I believe the system is not really valid anymore if said companies produce their mercahndise in "cheap-labour" countries and then sell them here for a premium price as "Made in Germany"...

But that is an entirely different topic of course.


The thing that really bugs me is, why anybody would be interested in the geo-restrictions stuff. Sony did it, Amazon is doing it and several others are also doing it. The problem is pretty new, so it can't be "relics" from old contracts, and I don't think the authors are behind this, because I honestly can't see them begging their publishers to restrict sales to certain areas. Maybe it really has something to do with taxes, because import-VAT would not be applied on ebooks at the moment (if I buy from booksonbaord I get excellent prices because I pay in Dollars and the Dollar is currently rather weak compared to the Euro). Maybe that is the issue and we are ranting about Copyright, Authros and Publishers in vain? But who is going to give us a straight answer? Amazon.com never answered my questions about the geo-restrictions...

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Olympus

... in the past years I had no problems with any regions for buying books - suddenly I am - so I conclude regions are a "mistake" from the recent manufactured contracts ...

You have made an erroneous conclusion. Book contracts have almost always been for particular regions. Often the regions are US/Canada and UK/rest of the world for English language books.

What has changed recently is that UK publishers noticed that US publishers were selling ebooks in the UK, where the UK publishers had exclusive ebook rights. So there were threats of lawsuits, resulting in the US publishers threatening to pull their ebooks from any resellers that didn't enforce the regional rights that the US publishers had.

The problem isn't new contracts. The problem is that there haven't been new contracts to take into account the real situation for ebooks.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by CommanderROR

The problem is pretty new, so it can't be "relics" from old contracts

No, it really is because of contract issues.

The role EU Governments have had is to declare that the point of sale of "digitally delivered" goods is the location of the person buying the goods. This happened back in 2001-2003.

And then it took a while for UK publishers to realise that this meant their exclusive sales rights were being infringed and to threaten US publishers.


There's no way the EU is going to reverse the decision on point of sale, so the only way to avoid the problem is for new contracts for ebooks to not contain regional restrictions, and for old contracts to be renegotiated.

[meraxes]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

There's no way the EU is going to reverse the decision on point of sale,

Unless someone drags it before the WTO on the basis that this is protectionist and anti-competitive. Or Europe's own consumer rights watchdog realizes that Europeans are being corralled into a digital ghetto.

[PaperNotIncluded]

Hi there,
I've been published by TFP and Harper Collins and the impression that I got when reading through the contracts that I've signed is that the original publisher gets the right to sell the book to other publishers in other regions.

So, for example, when I was published in the UK I got my advance, then, when the rights were sold to an American publisher I got *another* advance.

A similar thing would be happening to the original publisher.

So it's used in a way that nets the publisher money on the wager that they can get the book picked up by another country's publishing house.

Now, with ebooks I suspect that they are playing the same game instead of realising that 'internet' should be a region all on it's own.

I'd *like* to think that they have done their research and worked out that the current system is returning the most profit for them. I say I'd like to think so, but somehow I doubt it...

(I am a bit of a strange case though, as I've drunk the Doctorow Kool-aid and have it written into my contract that both books get released as a CC download).

This is my own experience, and other authors may vary.

[meraxes]

Hi - thanks for this info. Do you have any idea how much you get for every book sold? And how much is the book itself?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by PaperNotIncluded

Hi there,
I've been published by TFP and Harper Collins and the impression that I got when reading through the contracts that I've signed is that the original publisher gets the right to sell the book to other publishers in other regions.
....

(I am a bit of a strange case though, as I've drunk the Doctorow Kool-aid and have it written into my contract that both books get released as a CC download).

This is my own experience, and other authors may vary.

Right and each publisher and each contract (as you indicate) can be different.

What's a CC download?