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eReader.com Limits E-book Sales To US Citizens
An anonymous reader writes "eReader.com seems to have begun applying distribution restrictions to its library. I first noticed that there was a FAQ page about distribution restrictions this morning. When I tried to order a few books this afternoon I simply couldn't — a large banner on the order confirmation told me the books had distribution restrictions. I checked a number of titles but it seems a large number of books are no longer available to non-US citizens like me. It is interesting to note that this policy change got implemented shortly after Barnes&Noble purchased Fictionwise. I have no idea if the new owners are behind this new policy but it seems crazy to restrict sales of ebooks. I've bought dozens of ebooks from eReader the past 4 years. I still have 15 dollar store credit but cannot buy any of the books I am interested in." (Right now, the link that should display these new geographic restrictions returns an error message that says the page is being updated.) Sounds like Barnes & Noble is taking its cues from Apple.
(Right now, the link that should display these new geographic restrictions returns an error message that says the page is being updated.)
Well, they still have their (what I assume to be their old) Geographic Restrictions page here up and it says:
We are legally bound to restrict sale of titles that have these limitations to the allowed countries. If we did not, we would lose the books and nobody would be able to buy them from us. We don't like it any more than you do, believe us when we tell you that. It causes us not only to lose sales, but also to get complaints from customers, and we like to keep our customers happy.
I don't think they're taking a cue from anybody, they're just following distribution laws so they don't lose their license to distribute ... and possibly face a lawsuit. Once you get big enough, you become a target. I wouldn't blame eReader or B&N ... blame a shitty distribution system.
My work here is dung.
I don't see why a company should have to sell things to other countries. Despite the internet being free, things contained on the internet do not necessarily have to be geographically free. It reduces the amount of time, energy, and money they might have to spend on lawyers looking up various countries copyright claims, and their market may primarily be based in the United States. Of course, in time this might change, but I'm not one for forcing companies to do things some other way. I'll just buy from another company. Capitalism wins in the end.
It's all fun and games till someone divides by 0. Then it's hilarious.
Outdated contracts based on a pre-Internet view reduce company's profits yet again.
Why can't I view youtube videos to follow at 11.
They're not restricting sales to US Citizens. They're restricting sales to US residents (presumably people who have an account with a credit card billing address in the US).
Half the point of digital distribution is that prices can be set globally, and for the most part, companies can choose their per-unit profit and let the whole world deal with it. If that price ends up higher than a competitor, the competitor has a chance to get higher sales volume. That free market competition is in the spirit of capitalism.
Sam ty sig.
If I ever write a book, you can damn well bet I won't sanction distribution in Britain.
International law is an absolute clusterfuck, especially where IP is concerned. There's really not much to be done. Of course, it would be nice to get rid of region coding and other such bull, but it's here to stay.
Have you been living under a rock these last few years? "Everybody else" already has been forced into socialism: it's called a "bailout".
It is because most non-US people are foot-loose and fancy-free with distributing copyrighted material. That is, you are all pirates.
So really, you brought it on yourself by assuming that just because you chose socialism in your country, everybody else has to be force into socialism too.
Pirating copyrighted material is capitalism. Regulating distribution of copies (or any sort of regulations whatsoever on a market) is anti-capitalist. Neither is socialist.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
With matters like these, fortunately, the solution is very simple
Here it is:
http://thepiratebay.org/
Here you have a case where you are willing to pay for a legitimate product but you are unable to acquire it due to arbitrary and pointless restrictions.
It's the same sort of problem as DRM. Region locking, device locking ... primarily serve to piss off customers. So go wild.
(When you CAN legitimately purchase the product you desire, of course, piracy thereof becomes a totally different matter).
I'm sorry to say that the intellectual property tycoons have won the war of artificial scarcity. It's nonsense to restrict the sale of bits, but they seem to have been able to buy laws in most civilized countries that enforce their obsolete business model. For the normal people like us, there's only one recourse: STEAL THE BOOK.
I got an email today from FW which is probably relevant to the timing of the implementation:
Given that the Tolkien estate has a LOT of expen$ive lawyers to feed, the conclusion is left as an exercise for the Slashdot readership.
Capitalism only wins if there are neither artificial or natural monopolies (and one could argue that with books it is certainly often the case) or artificial barrier to competition like DRM to implement region encoding. There is no reason whatsoever to have something like BITS limited to a region of the globe, except to artificially limit the market.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Wasn't the Internet supposed to break down physical barriers like distance etc.? Things like this really start to piss me off.
I am also a non-US person and the hoops we need to jump to to get stuff is unreal. I don't get it either... If we buy stuff over the Net in the US, the producer of the goods/services still get their share, so why must I wait 1 or 2 years before the material is available in my country?
O well - there will be a way to circumvent this shortly. I'll just add to my ever growing list :-)
Need an ISP in South Africa?
By limiting the scope of distribution and introducing products into different markets at different times, big publishers can manipualte the market to get bigger profits.
Or rather they believe they can. It's quite possible that doing this can result in less total profit. Because people who can't buy the whatever get it by other means. In the past these means tended to include books being smuggled in tourists' luggage.
The price a market in another country pays might be a lot higher. If they could just buy from overseas distributors (i.e. in the US), those profits would go away.
Many times people will not "shop around". Especially if there is a local supplier.
The other thing is that such price fixing often involves bending, if not breaking, laws.
I also can't buy Bose headphones from Amazon, since Amazon.com won't ship to Europe, and Amazon.de doesn't sell them. (Didn't actually try Amazon.co.uk, but you get the point.) I can buy those headphones from local electronics shops though. I assume the reason that Amazon.com won't ship them is that Bose has distribution agreements with European companies, and Amazon.com didn't think it was worth the effort and/or expense to secure those distribution rights. (Although it would be nice if they would give you pointers to affiliates who would ship to your address, rather than just saying they won't do it.)
I completely agree with the posters who complain that it's inconvenient, but if you see a product that has value, and is not available in some particular market, then it probably wouldn't be hard to set up a business, sign a distribution agreement, and start selling. Don't blame a company that has chosen to focus their marketing and distribution efforts on a market smaller than the entire world, blame the lack of local initiative (or the lack of local demand) in your country of residence.
Several months ago when the Canadian dollar was at par with the American dollar Canadians started looking at the things they were buying and realizing (that for certain items) that they were paying way too much compared to their friends to the south.
The two big things on the list were Magazines and books. Even when you took the old Canadian dollar value into account, it still didn't add up to the amount we Canadians were being charged. (I had even seen Canadian written books, published and produced in Canada being sold for 40% more than the listed American price).
So, naturally, Canadians started getting pissed off and demanding that retailers sell the item to them at the listed US price. Many retailers were happy to oblige.
Publishers, on the other hand, weren't too fond of the events that were transpiring. Within a few months they had started replacing the books and magazines on the shelves with ones with adjusted pricing.
And by adjusted pricing, I mean, books and magazines with the American pricing removed so Canadian consumers wouldn't be able to see the difference in price.
I think you mean US resident, not US Citizen.