Hachette Book Group causing major hassles

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

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..

Well, it is a bit of a gray area. When you are selling software, you are generally doing two things... 1) Transferring the license 2) Transferring the media. Since you give someone the CD with the software on it, when you sell it, you are NOT making a copy of it.

But, when you sell an eBook you must "copy" it. Since you don't have the permission to copy (a copyright) then you are violating copyright to sell it. Actually, if you want to be anal about it, when you "copy" the ebook from your PC to your reader you are violating the "copyright" but that would certainly fall under fair use.

BOb

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by HarryT

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.

That is an implicit, not explicit agreement. The legality is questionable.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

That is an implicit, not explicit agreement. The legality is questionable.

What... isn't the fact that it is specifically expressed in the agreement make it explicit by definition?

Explicit means clearly expressed or readily observable. Implicit means implied or expressed indirectly.

BOb

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

What... isn't the fact that it is specifically expressed in the agreement make it explicit by definition?

Explicit means clearly expressed or readily observable. Implicit means implied or expressed indirectly.

BOb

Explicit agreement is when you have to click the yes button. Implicit agreement is when you don't. At Fictionwise, use of the site implies that you agree to the Terms of Use agreement.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

But, when you sell an eBook you must "copy" it. Since you don't have the permission to copy (a copyright) then you are violating copyright to sell it. Actually, if you want to be anal about it, when you "copy" the ebook from your PC to your reader you are violating the "copyright" but that would certainly fall under fair use.

I thought most DRM schemes made it explicit how many copies you could have and under what terms. For instance, with Mobipocket, you have to register the PIDs of the devices (including your computer) that you will use. I suppose you could only license devices and not your computer but I think most of the agreements say it's ok to store a backup copy.

[Barcey]

I continue to be amazed that publishers think it's necessary to add barriers for people that want to buy ebooks.

1) Do the customers want this? No
2) Do the customers need regional restrictions? No
3) Will it increase the administration and distribution costs? Yes
4) Is it possible to enforce regional restrictions on the world wide web? No
5) Do we really need regional restrictions for electronic books going forward? No

OK, so I won't let BoB sell my books anymore because they haven't pissed off their customers and increased their administrative costs in a futile attempt to apply regional criteria to purchases.

I would like to see them apply the same administrative burden to everyone that is selling their paperbacks at international airports. "I'm sorry sir I won't take your money."

[basschick]

the two books that were removed from my fictionwise account were both little, brown books but the u.s. publisher is hatchette. i wrote to them and got a friendly response that basically didn't tell me much.

on the other hand, if (and remember, i said if) little, brown receives the money for sales in the uk and hatchette receives the money for sales in the u.s., i can see where there would be a problem. still, there should be a better way to resolve it - one that doesn't put the end user right in the middle. like having the stores send them a statement including the total number of buyers of each title for the quarter and where they are...

[sianon]

I have two books from one author, both published by the same publisher:

A Summer Affair
by Elin Hilderbrand
Little, Brown
Published: Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Barefoot
by Elin Hilderbrand
Little Brown
Published: Monday, July 2, 2007

According to advice from Books on Board Little Brown is an imprint of Hatchet.

Barefoot was supplied by OD and is still available, It is also available in Adobe, LIT and E-reader formats.

A Summer Affair was supplied by PX and is affected.

The advice from BoB as to why downloads are not available is as follows:


We are sorry that your ebook download is temporarily unavailable.

Hachette (the Publisher) has pulled all of its titles, as well as its imprints, from US distribution. The Hachette imprints included in this process are:

* Hachette Audio
* Hachette Book Group
* Grand Central Publishing
* Little, Brown
* Little, Brown Adult Books
* Little, Brown and Company
* Little, Brown and Company (UK)
* Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
* FaithWords
* WindBlown Media
* Orbit
* Yen Press
* Center Street

This issue is affecting all eBook retailers and not just BooksOnBoard. We are working with our distributors to resolve this issue as soon as possible. In the meantime, please help us out by writing the publisher directly at: customer.service@hbgusa.com.

Thank you,

Your BooksOnBoard Support Team


Karen

[roger64]

This battle about special distribution rights limited to a specific country or zone has been fought and lost by music distributors. In the meantime, piracy skyrocketed.

It will happen now for ebooks. The digital "weight" of an ebook is much lighter than a MP3 file...You do not need to be a big prophet to realize where the consumers will be going. After some years of bleeding losses, publishers will try to adapt to this elusive market with more realistic offers.

We have been there before...

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by roger64

This battle about special distribution rights limited to a specific country or zone has been fought and lost by music distributors. In the meantime, piracy skyrocketed.

It will happen now for ebooks. The digital "weight" of an ebook is much lighter than a MP3 file...You do not need to be a big prophet to realize where the consumers will be going. After some years of bleeding losses, publishers will try to adapt to this elusive market with more realistic offers.

We have been there before...

You are absolutely correct that the battle has been fought by music distributors. Not entirely clear that it has been lost, but that's not really relevant to my next point.

The key issue here is this: Many publishers do not hold world-wide distribution rights to the books they publish -- even for electronic publishing. This is exactly the source of the problem. The publisher can't (legally) sell outside their region. So their lawyers are telling them "Put a stop to out-of-region sales before we get sued for a zillion dollars!"

Given how their contracts are written and the particular rights the publishers do (and don't) own, the lawyers are absolutely correct! (It really hurts me to say that, but...) It may be regrettable, it's certainly not very realistic in online reality, and it's for darn sure a PITA for the customers, but nevertheless that's the way things are.

You don't have to think "publishers have their head in the sand" to understand what's going on. Even if they want to get world-wide rights for eBook purposes, they face the problem that the rights on that other continent (the one right over there!) have already been sold to some competing publisher. And there may be three or four completely different companies each of which owns rights for some subset of the world.

Very very few publishers actually hold world-wide e-rights. Baen typically does, because they insist on buying that way. But, in return, they purchase non-exclusive eRights -- the author and his/her agent can sell non-exclusive rights to other publishers too. It's instructive to note that Baen has lost at least one popular author and series because the author's agent advised him not to sell world-wide e-rights. Sigh. And any company that was not as forward-looking as Baen generally has e-Rights only for the regions they have paper rights for.

Given all of this, how shall we untangle the rights picture without screwing somebody out of something (e-Rights in a particular region) that they've legitimately bought and paid for?

Xenophon

P.S. To the best of my knowledge, the different companies hold the rights in different regions has not yet been resolved in the music world. That's certainly a part of why the iTunes stores are not the same world-wide, for example. Is anyone aware of newer developments there?

[Greg Anos]

It's a Gordian knot...and over time the answer will become meaningless as piracy erodes away their marketplace. Which is what happened in music...

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

The key issue here is this: Many publishers do not hold world-wide distribution rights to the books they publish -- even for electronic publishing. This is exactly the source of the problem. The publisher can't (legally) sell outside their region. So their lawyers are telling them "Put a stop to out-of-region sales before we get sued for a zillion dollars!"

I agree, but it is the lawyers (and only the lawyers) definition of "sell" that is the problem. If I live in the US but fly to the UK, walk into a UK bookstore and pay for a book with a US credit card no one tries to stop me. If I live in the UK but logon to a US ebook store and pay for an ebook with a UK credit card alarm bells ring and warning signs flash. If everyone could agree that UK ebookstores can sell UK ebooks to their customers (no matter where the customers live) and US ebookstores can sell US ebooks to their customers (no matter where the customers live) almost everyone would be happy. My impression is that this would be exactly the legal situation if a US ebookstore copied your ebooks onto a USB stick and mailed that to you in the UK, but if you download them somehow it is different. Note that this isn't an issue of 3rd party involvement, lots of times stuff you buy gets shipped from a warehouse owned by some other company in a truck from yet another company and this has no effect of the transaction from the customers point of view.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Barcey

I continue to be amazed that publishers think it's necessary to add barriers for people that want to buy ebooks.

You're entirely missing the point. It's not that publishers "want" to impose regional restrictions, but that the contracts which they have already signed with authors impose regional restrictions on them. It's not the publisher's "fault".

[Auron]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You're entirely missing the point. It's not that publishers "want" to impose regional restrictions, but that the contracts which they have already signed with authors impose regional restrictions on them. It's not the publisher's "fault".

Respectfully Harry, I disagree - only because those contracts are generally put forward BY the publishers themselves.

While some of the contracts have certainly been in place for a while, this has been such an obvious issue in music and video for so long, that I consider it short-sighted of them to have not looked into addressing these concerns years ago in all new contracts.

While e-book readers have been gaining in popularity only in the last few years, recorded media and the issues around its distribution have been obvious for several decades now (at least as far back as the creation of video tapes if not longer).

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

You are absolutely correct that the battle has been fought by music distributors. Not entirely clear that it has been lost, but that's not really relevant to my next point.

The key issue here is this: Many publishers do not hold world-wide distribution rights to the books they publish -- even for electronic publishing. This is exactly the source of the problem. The publisher can't (legally) sell outside their region. So their lawyers are telling them "Put a stop to out-of-region sales before we get sued for a zillion dollars!"

Why then do they not sue/pull their books from BD or Amazon.uk for selling to non-UK customers, or Amazon.com for selling outside US??

The above justification just does not hold water. The reason in this specific case (Hachette) is that US e-book vendors sell lower than the UK ones, so the UK ones complained.