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eReader.com Limits E-book Sales To US Citizens
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Apr 19, 2009 10:07 PM
from the geography-is-destiny dept.
from the geography-is-destiny dept.
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.
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Apple: Apple's Terms No Longer Allow ITMS Purchases Outside of US 319 comments
JasonDT writes "I just accepted the new terms of service for iTunes and found that I will no longer be allowed to access US iTunes outside of the United States. This may seem like no big deal but, I am a US citizen living abroad and I regularly purchase and view TV and movies from AppleTV. Not to mention US citizens just traveling abroad. Does anyone know if this has been enforced or have themselves been affected by this?"
Submission: eReader.com limits ebook sales to US-citizens by Anonymous Coward
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Link for Geographic Restrictions (Score:5, Informative)
(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 [ereader.com] 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.
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What makes you think this is a matter of laws and not a stupid restriction placed into their contract by the content rights owners? It would be nice to know the content rights owners hanging on to the old distribution models so the complaints could be sent there.
Re:Link for Geographic Restrictions (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you think this is a matter of laws and not a stupid restriction placed into their contract by the content rights owners?.
Yes but it's important to remember why these contracts were often in place. I mean, it wasn't that we had to get all of Herman Melville's whaling stories to China so they could enjoy them ... it was to ail a very real problem of people taking literature, translating it and selling it in foreign countries with no revenue going to the original artist or publisher. So I believe it was commonplace to accept distribution contracts to--ironically--protect your works from being distributed for free in foreign countries where you would have no chance of prosecuting. But if someone is there with distribution rights, the people posing as you had better watch out!
... have fun with those piracy lawsuits.
... like court cases to handle piracy, accurate translations, royalty management, etc. What system do you propose replace distribution rights contracts?
There are other reasons for these distribution contracts and I'll bet a lot of them are along the lines of "sure we'll take a few thousand from you because no one's going to read this in your area"
I would like to call distribution rights an old or archaic system but frankly that's what's in place and you'd need to point out how it would protect their work from being sold without consent if you dreamed up a new system. I'm sure it varies publisher to publisher but the rights are probably an ongoing contract that would be difficult to change. You have some very real barriers to overcome
Parent
Re:Link for Geographic Restrictions (Score:5, Interesting)
This may be one of the historical reasons for the restrictions, but I don't think it has much to do with the present reasons for them.
To start off with, you have to understand that traditional-style print publishing is an extremely capital-intensive business. It costs a huge amount of money to set a traditional (not print-on-demand) printing setup for a run. Once you have it set up, the incremental cost of producing one more book is virtually zero. Then you have this huge inventory, which you have to hope you can sell. Because of this, magazines and book publishing houses want to make sure that their contract with the author is exclusive. I've sold some short fiction, and typically what happens is that they want first North American serial rights (FNASR) and exclusivity for a certain amount of time. Books are somewhat different, but it's still the same general concept either way. If they're going to spend the money to put you in print, they want to be damn sure that readers will be getting your writing through them. (By the way, most short fiction markets don't mind at all if you put your work up for free online after a certain amount of time has elapsed.)
However, it would be ridiculous for them to try to demand that kind of exclusivity worldwide. In many cases they simply don't have marketing, sales, and distribution in other countries, so demanding exclusivity would do them no good, and would do the author harm.
There are also all kinds of other things that the publisher doesn't want exclusivity for because they're not in a position to exercise the rights effectively. For instance, it's very common these days for people to publish short fiction in a magazine, and then afterward sell audio rights so that people can buy a recording to listed to on their iPod or in their car. In the case of short fiction, there's also the possibility that it will be anthologized, and that's something a book publisher is going to handle, not the magazine publisher. None of this is an evil plot. It's just common business sense.
By the way, in my opinion Fictionwise is very cool. As a writer, I need to be familiar with my genre (SF). If someone tells me, "You've got to read 'Out of All Them Bright Stars' by Nancy Kress," I want to read it. The library doesn't have it, and I don't particularly want to pay $10-20 for an anthology so that I can read that one story. Well, I can simply buy it on fictionwise for a buck. Best deal ever. It's like being able to buy one song on iTunes or Amazon rather than having to buy the whole album full of crappy filler that you didn't want.
Parent
Re:Link for Geographic Restrictions (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm wondering if they aren't just trying to set themselves up like the DVD cartels did - with the ability to sell books for $1.00 in places where people can only afford $1.00, while preventing people in places where they can afford to pay $10 from buying "grey market" books.
Parent
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Well here's a blindingly obvious answer to your question: iTunes for ebooks.
There, rights problem solved.
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"was to ail a very real problem of people taking literature, translating it and selling it in foreign countries with no revenue going to the original artist or publisher."
Sorry this as the main excuse is total tosh. This happening would have no effect if it was in eReader or book form. This has been going on for years. If anything the eReader makes this more annoying to do (can't distribute pages among multiple people to type faster, can't OCR).
The reason why they have it like this is simply for the real wo
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> it was to ail a very real problem of people taking literature, translating it and selling it in foreign countries with no revenue going to
> the original artist or publisher.
What I find interesting here is that this is roughly the same problem as was described in a post here about child porn. That it... this all originated back in a time when only professionals with some serious bankroll could do this. You used to need a printing press, which was beyond the means of the average person... just like ki
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You do realize, Mr. Wack, that most translations are done by machine nowadays?
Most: maybe, the good ones: no. And if you can show me something that translates to Hungarian, I'll take your argument at face value. Regardless, if you think that there are algorithms to translate The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy in a way that it retains its qualities, you're a moron. Go learn another language.
When was the last time you read a machine-translated text that didn't have glaring semantical errors?
And IF the work is done by a good translator do you really honestly believe they deserve as much credit as the AUTHOR? What planet are you from anyway?
The author conveys his thoughts. The translator conveys someone elses thoughts. We can argue a
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I had to translate a couple of texts from Spanish to English a few weeks back. That was the first time i've done something like that for years and i used google translator for the first time.
I had to do some serious editing, but it did make the job considerably easier. If i had to translate a book, i reckon i'd do it the same way. But then i'm not a professional translater.
Re:Link for Geographic Restrictions (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. I am writing a computer system for use in Spain. Most of the translations just go into a database of strings that the customer translates as and when.
I had to demo a couple of screens that had missing translations. I don't speak Spanish but I tried to do these in a mechanical style - just copying parts of translations that were already done. Most of them were slightly wrong in some way.
Also some small parts use hard-coded strings in javascript. I ran these through Google translate and asked them to point out any problems. There were only about 30 words / phrases in total.
I got complaints that on the date selector, March and May were translated as Marcha and Puede (March as in walking, May as in 'may I...'). And there were many complaints about shortened phrases - removing words such as 'of' is generally fine in English when pushed for space, but not in Spanish.
Parent
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Oh, and the restriction mentioned would be to residents, not citizens. A US citizen living abroad would be restricted just like anyone else in their country of residence, while foreigners in the United States would not be.
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Oh, and the restriction mentioned would be to residents, not citizens. A US citizen living abroad would be restricted just like anyone else in their country of residence, while foreigners in the United States would not be.
This is not true, I believe the only way they determine what country you reside in is your credit card. So as long as your credit card is still linked to your home on U.S. soil, purchase away while abroad and download as you'd like. In the original Geographic Restrictions, they stated this and I would expect it to be the same way since it's the safest way and the way Amazon does it. Quite counter-intuitive as a foreigner could walk into any brick and mortar store and pick up a copy (hopefully in a langua
Re:Link for Geographic Restrictions (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and the restriction mentioned would be to residents, not citizens. A US citizen living abroad would be restricted just like anyone else in their country of residence, while foreigners in the United States would not be.
according to Ereader its your billing address of your credit card:
How do you determine what country a customer is in? We look at the billing country of your credit card to determine your location.
source- http://mobile.ereader.com/ereader/mobile/help/GeographicRestrictionsFAQ.htm [ereader.com]
as long as your credit card is resolving to the US/Canada or another non-restricted country you are in the clear.
Parent
Internet vs. Comapnies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Internet vs. Comapnies (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
So maybe I'm riding on my fanciful unicorn while writing this, but the Internet offers a unique possibility to dissolve borders. This isn't about anarchy or forcing my world view on people, this is about people coming together irrespective of their location and having an intellectual, economical, and political dialogue.
The side effects of the Internet's design include creating a borderless society. Why should I have to look up the laws of another country? In effect, they are a traveler that has arrived in the US and are electronically conducting trade. It's as if they arrived here, pulled out a credit card and paid for a product, and got back on their plane home. Except this plane goes nearly the speed of light and they don't have to enjoy the privilege of a body cavity search at the airport.
Parent
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In effect, they are a traveler that has arrived in the US and are electronically conducting trade. It's as if they arrived here, pulled out a credit card and paid for a product, and got back on their plane home
I think this is why people get so massively irritated by these restrictions.
When a customer gets turned away from a web based shop, it is usually not perceived by the customer as a sale rejected due to some import/export restriction - instead, the people impacted by these restrictions feel as though they've entered the store, chosen a product, produced their credit card in order to pay - just to find themselves being kicked out of the store due to their nationality.
I remember in the old days (10-15 years ag
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I don't see why a company should have to sell things to other countries.
Well one reason would be that they are required to by trade agreements entered into by their governments. For example the NAFTA requires that once you start selling a product to one of the member countries you have to keep selling it unless you also restrict selling to customers in the home country - i.e. no discriminating against the consumers in other countries. The US actually pushed hard for this because they didn't want Canada
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Except that there in practice appear to be all sorts of exemptions. e.g. all the fuss made by the US over pharmacuticals, the difficulty Canadians have subscribing to US satellite TV, even the US having different Harry Potter books from the rest of t
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Empty Ideology (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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Downloading illegally wins in the end. I just went on BT and downloaded some 45,000+ titles from Fictionwise. Good thing they wouldn't let me give them any money.
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I'll just buy from another company.
Where else can I get Hulu.com content then? The Pirate Bay?
No story here (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Citizens vs. Residents (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah, you don't need to be a US resident to have that either.
Libel troll protection (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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Those who can, do, those who can't, complain about potential distribution in Britain.
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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.
Fine, then you don't the money that people are willing to give you for it, instead they will resort to acquiring it through less legitimate means and you will still lose.
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So you're saying you would rather people in Britain pirate your work than buy it? Or do you have some kind of racist agenda against the brits?
Historical (Score:2)
An author sells rights to publish his/her work to different publishers in different countries, and there's often either legal protection or trade agreements to prevent parallel distribution of editions from other regions.
So, a book might be published by Doubleday in the US but by Pan MacMillan in Australia, and the major book chains in Oz wouldn't carry the Doubleday version (some specialised genre bookshops might.)
This is almost certainly Fiction
The solution is very simple (Score:5, Insightful)
With matters like these, fortunately, the solution is very simple
Here it is:
http://thepiratebay.org/ [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).
They have won... (Score:5, Insightful)
Announcement today by Fictionwise (Score:2, Informative)
I got an email today from FW which is probably relevant to the timing of the implementation:
So how do they know? (Score:2)
Homeland security would be interested in the magical technique they have for telling apart a US Citizen, a Legal Resident, and an Illegal Alien given they all have US mailing addresses, credit cards, an so on...
The new anti-internet (Score:2, Interesting)
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 :-)
Just obeying the law ... nothing to see here folks (Score:2)
Copyright, Trademark and Patent laws are all forms of property rights.
That they are artificial property, as compared to real property (real estate), is interesting but otherwise essentially irrelevant.
What matters is like all real property, these other property rights are national, not international, in scope.
Copyright exists in one nation, and is created by an act of law and under the laws of that nation, alone.
For residents of some other country, the copyrights reside with some other entity (which is to s
Opportunity (Score:2, Informative)
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
Do I have to show them my passport? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you mean US resident, not US Citizen.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you been living under a rock these last few years? "Everybody else" already has been forced into socialism: it's called a "bailout".
Re:Socialism. That's why. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
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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.
Thanks, good sir. You made me laugh and smile on an otherwise dull morning :)
Here's a ball. Why don't you go bounce it?
Re:Socialism. That's why. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
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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
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Maybe the person submitting the story doesn't speak English as a first language. The word "nation" for instance means different things in other cultures. The French have a concept of civic nation, which caused a lot of grief and misunderstanding in Canada where some people in Quebec wanted recognition of their nation.
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I _really_ hope that is sarcasm.
Canada is not a communist country, y'know.
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I was actually referring to the likes of russia and china, well known for hosting scammers as well as being the origin of many botnet attacks.