Content Aussie K3 owner disappointed by lack of Aus content. Want access to US store. - Page 2

michael.c · 10-21-2010, 01:42 PM

I've already downloaded a couple of new release ebooks from torrents. I would feel bad about it, but I don't because amazon and the publishers are trying to screw everyone.

I have given up trying to get US content in Aus. I tried to get Hotspot Shield going so i could at start browsing and try and weasel my way into US store. But amazon asks me to register a US address which i don't have. Also, amazon is still picking up my Aus IP address. Hotspot doesnt work for me! I used a random proxy i found through google. It worked, but I'm not gonna put my credit card details through a random proxy.

The whole situation is frustrating to say the least. Has amazon became just another Apple or Microsoft? Keeping everything closed, just turns people off (especially the techheads).

Hopefully some nice hacker / nerd can sort this out. God bless em!

If only piratebay had aussie ebooks.

montalex · 10-21-2010, 03:05 PM

I live in Canada, and often find that ebooks which are available in the U.S. on Amazon are not available in Canada. I did try changing my address on Amazon, and this worked, but I changed it back quickly because I don't want to get blacklisted by Amazon. What I did next was to open a U.S. account with Barnes and Noble -- I gave them my credit card with a U.S. address, and I have been buying books from them for months with no problems. Of course, I then need to remove the DRM in order to convert the epub to mobi for Kindle, but this is easy, especially with the new Calibre plugin (See Darkreverser's Weblog).

Laine · 10-21-2010, 03:37 PM

I have changed my reading habits. Several of my old favourite authors no longer get any money from me. I now get books from companies that want to sell to me and have found new favourite authors.

Ther are lots of alternatives out there and publishers and authors who are greedy deserve to go broke.

Pushka · 10-21-2010, 06:54 PM

Hm, google a US address and attach that to your account. Make sure you are in the USA store. No need for hotshield vpn. No dramas for me.

dasaint · 10-22-2010, 10:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pushka

Hm, google a US address and attach that to your account. Make sure you are in the USA store. No need for hotshield vpn. No dramas for me.

You need VPN it will detect your ip address regardless of whatever address you place .

Pushka · 10-23-2010, 07:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dasaint

You need VPN it will detect your ip address regardless of whatever address you place .

I repeat. I have never used VPN or hotshield to purchase books from the USA amazon store. And at last count, that is around 200 free and paid books. So don't tell me what I need.

luvmy4brats · 10-23-2010, 02:52 PM

On the flip side, there are books not available in the US that are available in other countries. My Kindle sometimes takes a vacation to those countries and comes back with the books I want. <grin>

Pushka · 10-23-2010, 07:30 PM

Hey luv, nice to see you and your kindle doing some overseas travel. Yes, my kindle and I, we have recently returned from the UK too! Funny thing is, I have relatives there - googled their name in white pages and got their address. Actually, kind of scary really how much information is out there. They are aged in their 80's - hope Amazon dont send them a letter congratulating them on their kindle purchases......

luvmy4brats · 10-23-2010, 07:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pushka

Hey luv, nice to see you and your kindle doing some overseas travel. Yes, my kindle and I, we have recently returned from the UK too! Funny thing is, I have relatives there - googled their name in white pages and got their address. Actually, kind of scary really how much information is out there. They are aged in their 80's - hope Amazon dont send them a letter congratulating them on their kindle purchases......

LOL! Yes, we were recently in the UK as well. Apparently all the Roald Dahl books are available there.. (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and such). I used to live in Scotland (many moons ago) and still have friends there... I visit them quite often.

Wasabihound · 10-24-2010, 01:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrPLD

As another Aussie I for one look forward to these geo-restrictions becoming a thing of the past. Right now I suppose we're really in the transition phase for authors and publishers as they deal with old distribution rights contracts.

Paul.

Here, here Paul

I was trying to download a FREE Kindle Book (which I assume means it is in the public domain: Common Sense by Paine pub 1775 for goodness sake!

) and it can't be sold in Australia. I don't get it (the reasoning, that is, I can get the book from Manybooks: Common Sense, mobi edition.

)

Thanks for sharing the workarounds - will keep them in mind if Manybooks or the other sites fail me (haven't yet).

Tychocaine · 11-09-2010, 06:50 AM

Hello all.... sorry if this is OT (and long), but I did a whole lot of research on the kindle before I bought it, and this was the thread that helped me make up my mind, so I think my comments are relevant, in case anyone else is in a similar boat.

Anyway here's my experiences with the amazon online store.... just in case there's anyone out there (like me) doing a whole lot of research and thinking the hotspot shield trick works 100%.

I've got the current gen kindle (wifi, not 3G). I have NEVER turned on it's wireless or registered it with amazon, and I shipped it as a gift, so it's not linked to my normal amazon account.

I installed hotspot shield as per everones suggestions, but I also went a little further and installed Google Chrome (web browser)... so I had a fresh browser with no history or cookies. With hotspot shield active I went to gmail.com and registered a new clean gmail account. I then went to amazon.com and registered a new amazon account. I then went to browse the kindle eBook section.

First up, I got no new york times best seller list... it already knew where I was and was listing my country as Australia (don't ask me how it decided that). I guess because amazon uses an https connection to register the new amazon account (does this bypass the hotspot shield??) and might have sniffed out my real IP addy.

I then went to the manage my kindle page and set my country to United States, using a legitimate valid US postal address (from shipito). I did not enter a credit card, and I did not use a gift certificate. The only information amazon has about me is a valid US postal address.

I went back to the kindle store and it all looked good. I was able to 1-click order 7 books (all $0), but on the eighth, it bounced me to the error message about trying to buy a book from the incorrect geographic location and please contact customer service.

I've set my country back to Australia and will try resetting it shortly, but I'm not convinced that will help. I had hotspot shield running the whole time, and a valid US address... but it still somehow sniffed out my real location in Australia.

Like I said, these are just my experiences, and I'm sure it's working fine for a lot of people, but I just wanted to flag for people reading this thread that the solutions don't work for everyone.

If anyone else has hit this problem and overcome it I'd love to hear from you.

If you're an aussie who wants a lot of stuff from the US amazon store, let me save you some time... undernet.

If you're an author, I'm sorry if what I'm about to say offends you... but you should be scared for your livelihoods... the people you're trusting to sell your product (the publishers) are letting their greed drive your industry to ruin... like the music industry before it.

Honestly, my thoughts about geo-restrictions echo everyone else on the forum. I once considered books sacrosanct.... a year ago I never would have thought I'd steal them, but I've spent the last 3 weeks jumping through hoops that shouldn't exist, trying to overcome artificial barriers that don't need to be there, all so I can BUY electronic copies of books I already own.

But the publishers don't want my money and I'm tired of all the stuffing around. Amazon's made a great product, but the publishers need to stop hamstringing it... and if you're an Aussie, looking to buy a Kindle, don't expect the range of legitimately available books to be anywhere near satisfactory.

wudge · 11-09-2010, 10:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by foxykav

Note that if you are considering using this method to buy US content there is an fee if you buy the book and send it straight to your Kindle via the Whispernet. Amazon will charge you an "international" fee for sending it over the whispernet, it was 22 cents each for the few ebooks I managed to get.

Now to my problem - I live in Australia and recently brought a Kindle 3 and decided to try swapping my living address to and US address to get US content. I got a valid US address from http://www.fakeusaaddress.com then went to "Manage Your Kindle" and click on "Edit" under "Your Country". Then entered the valid American address.

It did work for a day and I got several downloads ( 7 to be exact ). Then Amazon got wise and stopped me. I could get to the "US content" ebook page, click on "buy" then direct amazon to send it to my Kindle or "via computer" but then an error message would appear saying :

I went into my account and the Kindle country was set the American address. I found out that the problem was once these purchases were billed to my Austrlian billing address for my credit card the site knew I was being a bit dodgy and starting blocking me.

For those thing of doing this please do it the right way ( not like me ) read http://jeffyen.blogspot.com/2010/08/...singapore.html it has a very clear method for buying US content in the Asia Pacfic region.

As for me now that my account is screwed I tried changing to a different American address but the same problem occured. I even tried changing the billing address on the credit card I use to match the American living address but no luck.

I was thinking of deregistering my Kindle from my account and creating another account with American details and connecting the Kindle to that account. But I'm worried that the ebooks I have already downloaded will not work on the Kindle since they are registerd to the old account. Plus if I want to download them again I will have to keep both accounts. From what I have read the ebooks are registered to the purchasing account and my to the PID of my Kindle. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I hope this post made sense so someone can help me. Does anyone have any bright ideas to get around this issue? Because I still have several ebooks I want to purchase but can't since they are US content only and I'm in Australia and want to keep the same amazon account.

Thanks.

an easy way around it tho is to just buy your now with US address amazon account a gift certificate.. and buy books with that credits.. that way your credit card won't verify address for your book purchases.

Pushka · 11-09-2010, 07:55 PM

Wow, you went through a huge process and still didnt achieve much success. I am still buying from the US store (although I have just returned from the US so at least I did really live there for a bit - and made sure I downloaded a couple of books while there) but have since returned to Australia and ordered a couple more books and still no email from them.

kyhwana · 11-12-2010, 02:13 AM

Pirate the shit out of those books. If they don't want to sell you the books just because you're in a different country, screw them.

Blue Tyson · 11-12-2010, 03:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kyhwana

Pirate the shit out of those books. If they don't want to sell you the books just because you're in a different country, screw them.

A very Australian attitude. ;-)

And probably Dutch, and Danish, and Vietnamese and Brazilian....

10-21-2010, 01:42 PM	#16
michael.c Junior Member Posts: 4 Karma: 82 Join Date: Oct 2010 Device: Kindle 3	Can't be stuffed with the drama of it all. I've already downloaded a couple of new release ebooks from torrents. I would feel bad about it, but I don't because amazon and the publishers are trying to screw everyone. I have given up trying to get US content in Aus. I tried to get Hotspot Shield going so i could at start browsing and try and weasel my way into US store. But amazon asks me to register a US address which i don't have. Also, amazon is still picking up my Aus IP address. Hotspot doesnt work for me! I used a random proxy i found through google. It worked, but I'm not gonna put my credit card details through a random proxy. The whole situation is frustrating to say the least. Has amazon became just another Apple or Microsoft? Keeping everything closed, just turns people off (especially the techheads). Hopefully some nice hacker / nerd can sort this out. God bless em! If only piratebay had aussie ebooks.

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10-21-2010, 03:05 PM	#17
montalex Fanatic Posts: 556 Karma: 1283268 Join Date: Mar 2010 Device: KindleDX,Kindle 4, Kindle Keyboard 3G	I live in Canada, and often find that ebooks which are available in the U.S. on Amazon are not available in Canada. I did try changing my address on Amazon, and this worked, but I changed it back quickly because I don't want to get blacklisted by Amazon. What I did next was to open a U.S. account with Barnes and Noble -- I gave them my credit card with a U.S. address, and I have been buying books from them for months with no problems. Of course, I then need to remove the DRM in order to convert the epub to mobi for Kindle, but this is easy, especially with the new Calibre plugin (See Darkreverser's Weblog).

10-21-2010, 03:37 PM	#18
Laine Addict Posts: 341 Karma: 1162396 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Cabramatta, Sydney, Australia Device: Aura H2O, Voyage	I have changed my reading habits. Several of my old favourite authors no longer get any money from me. I now get books from companies that want to sell to me and have found new favourite authors. Ther are lots of alternatives out there and publishers and authors who are greedy deserve to go broke.

10-21-2010, 06:54 PM	#19
Pushka Wizard Posts: 1,119 Karma: 1019140 Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Australia Device: kindle, Ipad, Iphone, Nexus and PPW	Hm, google a US address and attach that to your account. Make sure you are in the USA store. No need for hotshield vpn. No dramas for me.

10-23-2010, 02:52 PM	#22
luvmy4brats Connoisseur Posts: 52 Karma: 28302 Join Date: Jun 2010 Device: Kindle	On the flip side, there are books not available in the US that are available in other countries. My Kindle sometimes takes a vacation to those countries and comes back with the books I want. <grin>

10-23-2010, 07:30 PM	#23
Pushka Wizard Posts: 1,119 Karma: 1019140 Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Australia Device: kindle, Ipad, Iphone, Nexus and PPW	Hey luv, nice to see you and your kindle doing some overseas travel. Yes, my kindle and I, we have recently returned from the UK too! Funny thing is, I have relatives there - googled their name in white pages and got their address. Actually, kind of scary really how much information is out there. They are aged in their 80's - hope Amazon dont send them a letter congratulating them on their kindle purchases......

11-09-2010, 06:50 AM	#26
Tychocaine Junior Member Posts: 5 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2010 Device: Kindle	Hello all.... sorry if this is OT (and long), but I did a whole lot of research on the kindle before I bought it, and this was the thread that helped me make up my mind, so I think my comments are relevant, in case anyone else is in a similar boat. Anyway here's my experiences with the amazon online store.... just in case there's anyone out there (like me) doing a whole lot of research and thinking the hotspot shield trick works 100%. I've got the current gen kindle (wifi, not 3G). I have NEVER turned on it's wireless or registered it with amazon, and I shipped it as a gift, so it's not linked to my normal amazon account. I installed hotspot shield as per everones suggestions, but I also went a little further and installed Google Chrome (web browser)... so I had a fresh browser with no history or cookies. With hotspot shield active I went to gmail.com and registered a new clean gmail account. I then went to amazon.com and registered a new amazon account. I then went to browse the kindle eBook section. First up, I got no new york times best seller list... it already knew where I was and was listing my country as Australia (don't ask me how it decided that). I guess because amazon uses an https connection to register the new amazon account (does this bypass the hotspot shield??) and might have sniffed out my real IP addy. I then went to the manage my kindle page and set my country to United States, using a legitimate valid US postal address (from shipito). I did not enter a credit card, and I did not use a gift certificate. The only information amazon has about me is a valid US postal address. I went back to the kindle store and it all looked good. I was able to 1-click order 7 books (all $0), but on the eighth, it bounced me to the error message about trying to buy a book from the incorrect geographic location and please contact customer service. I've set my country back to Australia and will try resetting it shortly, but I'm not convinced that will help. I had hotspot shield running the whole time, and a valid US address... but it still somehow sniffed out my real location in Australia. Like I said, these are just my experiences, and I'm sure it's working fine for a lot of people, but I just wanted to flag for people reading this thread that the solutions don't work for everyone. If anyone else has hit this problem and overcome it I'd love to hear from you. If you're an aussie who wants a lot of stuff from the US amazon store, let me save you some time... undernet. If you're an author, I'm sorry if what I'm about to say offends you... but you should be scared for your livelihoods... the people you're trusting to sell your product (the publishers) are letting their greed drive your industry to ruin... like the music industry before it. Honestly, my thoughts about geo-restrictions echo everyone else on the forum. I once considered books sacrosanct.... a year ago I never would have thought I'd steal them, but I've spent the last 3 weeks jumping through hoops that shouldn't exist, trying to overcome artificial barriers that don't need to be there, all so I can BUY electronic copies of books I already own. But the publishers don't want my money and I'm tired of all the stuffing around. Amazon's made a great product, but the publishers need to stop hamstringing it... and if you're an Aussie, looking to buy a Kindle, don't expect the range of legitimately available books to be anywhere near satisfactory.

11-09-2010, 07:55 PM	#28
Pushka Wizard Posts: 1,119 Karma: 1019140 Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Australia Device: kindle, Ipad, Iphone, Nexus and PPW	Wow, you went through a huge process and still didnt achieve much success. I am still buying from the US store (although I have just returned from the US so at least I did really live there for a bit - and made sure I downloaded a couple of books while there) but have since returned to Australia and ordered a couple more books and still no email from them.

11-12-2010, 02:13 AM	#29
kyhwana Member Posts: 13 Karma: 84 Join Date: Sep 2010 Device: Kindle3	Pirate the shit out of those books. If they don't want to sell you the books just because you're in a different country, screw them.

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