eReader.com Limits E-book Sales To US Citizens 182
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.
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
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.
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(yawn). An Average Joe says, "Whatever."
If I can't buy a book legally, then I'll get it illegally off the net. All the companies are doing is shooting themselves in the foot - they're not hurting me at all - and instead they should be negotiating for worldwide internet distribution rights, not just confining themselves to one nation or one region.
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As an author, Publisher A has a division in the U.K. and in the U.S.. The U.K. division wants to publish your book, the U.S. division doesn't. Publisher B also has a division in both countries. The U.S. division of Publisher B wants t
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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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Nah it has nothing to do with copy protection: in this world of high quality OCR applications, scanning a book a making a text file out of it is very easy.
It's all about maximizing income by partitioning the market into segments and then charging each segment the maximum they can. Same as region coding for DVDs.
You see, in an ideal world (from the point of view of the seller), a seller would be able to charge each and every buyer the maximum said buyer is willing to pay for the product or service being sold
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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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You can't throw that out there without doing a two way translation or at the very least tell us what it'd be equivalent to in English!
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You can't throw that out there without doing a two way translation or at the very least tell us what it'd be equivalent to in English!
The idiom does not exist. If you translate it word for word, people take it literally.
Just for you, here's an example [sztaki.hu]: "Nincsen rózsa tövis nélkül", lit. "There are no roses without thorns". Translated as "every bean has its black". Just knowing all the words in the sentence does not give you the full meaning.
Excercise 1: decode the following:
"Don't look at the teeth of a gift horse."/"If the horse is a gift, don't look at the teeth."
"He has slipped on a banana-peel."
"It's below the bott
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I never said it was possible - I was just hoping for some hillarious examples. The ones you posted seem to be just that.
I'm struggling a bit to come up with some Danish proverbs, but the closest I can come is an expression for when people are exagerating a bit: "Spis nu lige brød til". The "best" litteral translation is "Eat now some bread with" but a proper translation is along the lines of "Why don't you eat some bread with that". Not that it makes any more sense, since it's not a part of the English
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The "Why don't you have some bread with that?" line sounds similar to "Would you like some cheese with your whine?" but without the pun. Probably a good but not so common US version would be to sarcastically use the line: "Would you like fries with that?" from McDonalds and such.
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I suppose you actually think copyright infringement is a right too, right?
I suppose you think the whole world is under US jurisdiction, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_international_copyright_treaties [wikipedia.org]
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I bow before your mighty anti-pirate list with China, Cuba and Thailand on it.
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Say what you will, but lots of countries enforce copyright. It's not like the United States is some lone copyright crusader.
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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.
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I'm surprised. If I were a professional translator I'd find a good Translation program to do the initial pass, and then go back and fix any mistakes manually. It's exactly the same process I used when converting ABEL to VHDL - the result wasn't perfect but it still saved a lot of typing time.
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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
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>>>This is not true, I believe the only way they determine what country you reside in is your credi
You've never heard of IP addresses? They pinpoint where you are located, so even if you are a U.S. citizen vacationing in the UK, you won't be able to access the website to purchase the book.
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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.
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The bain of my life for these past 12 years ... dumbass websites who assume that because you hold a credit card in one country, you must BE in that country.
So people with credit cards don't travel abroad ?
People with credit cards automatically cancel them if they move overseas, destroying a great credit history and limit, just to make e-commerce easier ?
Yes, I have a UK credit card, but live in the Philippines ... good to see your GeoIP lookup is working, look forward to you programming some common sense in
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Now let me see, I can buy a book or a CD/DVD from Amazon.com and have it shipped to me here in NZ, but I can't download movies/mp3's or buy ebooks or listen to pandora.com?
Umm, I wonder why the pirates win?
Hey America, you are only one country, not the whole friken world!
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.
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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)
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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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Yeah, it's not theft if you aren't allowed to buy it is it?
They certainly can't claim a lost sale when they claim for damages.
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*shrugs* If they won't sell it to me and it's not private material then it should go into the public domain. Once made public it should never stop being public - it's part of our shared culture.
I'd like it if there was a central repository (maybe the LoC) that you could legally get digital copies of everything. They could collect and distribute payments when something was still in copyright and otherwise make it available for free. It frustrates me when something I used to have and was lost/damaged can no l
I call bullshit (Score:2)
I keep trying to find e-books online to download, but I never can. None of the books I want to read seem to be available on any of the big torrent sites :(
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This was all sci fi/fantasy which is what I mostly like. I stumbled upon it while looking for an out of print book I liked as a teenager. Is something like 7GB of ebooks. Looks to be all Fictionwise and after reading a few I'm not sure I would have been happy paying for these as the editing is poor and obviously the result of OCR. A shame we can't have a group project to improve the editing.
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I'll just buy from another company.
Where else can I get Hulu.com content then? The Pirate Bay?
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That's what we sometimes call leaving money on the table. It's unfortunate that users are chased over to sites like the Pirate bay due to a lack of availability. Admittedly it's somewhat wise to be skeptical when that argument is made, but it is true, if people are locked out they're definitely not going to pay for the items.
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People here don't care about the business sense, or the time money an author, and publisher spent - they just want the work up and available for all. There is a sense of entitlement which is prevelant on this forum - that for some reason people are entitled to everything anyone ever thought or put on "paper". It is irrelevant if the person/company spent time or mon
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When was the last time you've seen a copyright expire? Hold your breath until you see another copyright expire and then get back to me.
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.
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Nope. Probably you have forgotten about a small law known as PATRIOT Act.
It makes sure that for a banking relationship to be established between you AND a US-based bank, you MUST have a US residence. Proof Needed including but not limited to Federal ID and/or Passport of any nation which US has recognized (which means no Taiwan passport), and residence proof by way of lease agreement and/or DMV non-driving ID.
In short, you MUST be a lawful US resident to get a US-issued Credit Card.
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That simply isn't true in the general sense of "banking relationships", the Patriot Act only requires that the institution confirms your identity and checks you against a blacklist. Many US banks will open checking & savings accounts for non-residents, although getting something like a credit card would be harder (and may be impossible, but I doubt it). I did it myself a few years ago, and I know a number of non-US residents living outside the US with perfectly legal US based accounts. You will need to
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VISA Prepaid cards don't have a Billing Address. They are meant to be used ONLY at PoS terminals: meaning electronic purchases only. No online crap.
If you try using them online, it gets rejected. I used a Citibank prepaid card at my Holiday Inn. Every single damn time you need to have the card present to make a debit. No online, no CNP transactions.
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Nope. Not Electron.
Just Citibank VISA prepaid card.
Probably because it was from Citi...
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I had a paypal account with an NZ credit card, iTunes US store required a US address (Before it came to NZ) but luckily there was a sign up system that allowed you to use your Paypal account to verfy your credit card. Viola, I had a US iTunes account 8)
Then realised DRM sucked, and hardly ever bought anything from them.
Allofmp3.com did really well out of me until visa stopped letting them process their orders.
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
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Why can't RIAA/MPAA/Publishers realize that their world has changed? Are they that stupid and dumb?
An author usually listens to his publisher and is always interested in the Largest audience possible simultaneously (possibly before
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).
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I don't see how any type of legal "problems" stated should contribute to adding restrictions to some countries in selling e-books. Why can Amazon sell books globally? Amazon has to follow the same laws and yet is able to ship me any product I desire and am able to pay for.
The reason is that copyright as the name suggests controls the activity of copying.
Afaict in the US anyone can buy books and resell them without the need for a special agreement with the publisher. Importing them into your country may or m
They have won... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? (Score:2)
Which is exactly what i do.
None from RIAA/MPAA and the Book Publishers Association have truly realized that the Internet is a blessing for them.
They STILL fight it because:
1) They still think in old terms: shipping of CDs, books hardcover and paperback etc. as a way to calculate sales.
2) They still think regional agreements with publishers is essential to control price: which is why you see two prices in Playboy's back: USD and Canadian Dollar (twice as USD)
3) They still hope the internet thingy goes away o
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For the normal people like us, there's only one recourse: 's/STEAL THE BOOK/share a copy with someone who was able to purchase it/'.
Sounds like a perfectly reasonable recourse to me. People in developing countries have been doing it for centuries (including the U.S. >100 years ago).
Announcement today by Fictionwise (Score:2, Informative)
I got an email today from FW which is probably relevant to the timing of the implementation:
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Not so - people in Harad and Khand can't legally purchase them.
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
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Nothing to see? It's an excellent, real example of broken copyright laws not only hindering the spread of knowledge to the developing world, but at the same time, arbitrarily restricting the income to authors and distributors.
These are the kind of stories that can make non-/. types actually think critically about the usefulness of copyright.
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You misunderstand the meaning of "Real Property", and in fact are using the legal description of "Personal Property" in your argument.
" ... In the common law, real property (or realty) refers to one of the two main classes of property, the other class being personal property (personalty). Real property generally encompasses land, land improvements resulting from human effort including buildings and machinery sited on land, and various property rights over the preceding. ..."
In other words, ship the land you
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
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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
Probably wouldn't be hard? Fuck, I have to become a gorram businessman and secure startup funding every time I want to buy a book? Have you the brain worms!?
I don't think region-locking has ANY place on the WORLD WIDE web. I would rather take all that business-starting effort and invest it in a DOS attack to kick those stupid companies off my precious internet. Enemies of freedom shouldn't be coddled.
Citizens or residents? (Score:2)
So if you're living in the US on a work visa, you're still not allowed any e-book goodness? How do they verify that you're actually a citizen, and not some foreign ne'er-do-well with a US bank account/social security number/other credentials?
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Not citizens, not even residents, just those currently withing those borders and/or in possession of a US-issued credit card.
The /. incorrect titles and summary: Annoying as hell since 1997!
Do what I do! (Score:2)
Great way to give TPB more users (Score:2)
And btw in case you haven't noticed there is much more people elsewhere than in the US - interesting that US companies fail to notice that. But
This reminds me of something... (Score:2, Interesting)
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 C
Do I have to show them my passport? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you mean US resident, not US Citizen.
What if the US Citizen is Overseas? How to verify? (Score:2)
So, what about expat's, ie, US Citizens living abroad?
Is there a way to access the "restricted content" from abroad, for such a person?
PS When will the Internet cause all of these restrictions to evaporate, already?!?
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Fine. (Score:2)
Keep on refusing to sell to me, and I'll keep on pirating the content. I have no moral obligation to buy what you don't want to sell.
Incidentally, I've never paid for an episode of The Daily Show, even though I was sitting with a credit card in my hand ready to buy a subscription on iTunes a few years ago.
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Have you been living under a rock these last few years? "Everybody else" already has been forced into socialism: it's called a "bailout".
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How is bailout any different than everyone collecting on their FDIC backed accounts? When the FDIC goes bankrupt, who do you think is going to cover those accounts?
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.
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No country is purely capitalist : They turn into a dictatorship very quickly
No country is purely socialist : They turn into a dictatorship very quickly
"Piracy" is not a crime that is punished in some countries simply because they do not have copyright
Copyright is a limited monopoly to encourage innovation in a capitalist system, it makes no sense in a purely socialist country
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Pirating copyrighted material is capitalism.
No it's not, it's copyright infringement. Capitalism is, in purest form, supply and demand (laissez-faire). If the price is too high, demand drops off. If something costs more than you are willing to pay, you do without, and the price drops or the supplier accepts the market price. I.e. it tends to equilibrium. Furthermore, that's what stimulates competition. Economics.
How is breaking the law enforcing capitalism?
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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.
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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.
You've got it back to front (Score:2)
Bzzzt!
This sort of distribution protection actually promotes world literacy. Think about it:
A book on C costs £27.94 on Amazon UK, and $55.77 on Amazon US. At bookshopofindia.com it costs $7.38. That's more expensive relative to the Indian wage, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper to a US or UK citizen. If there was no geogr
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Damn dude, A+ argument right there. Never really thought about WHY region protection was a big part of DRM, I always just rip it out ASAP, but your explanation sure makes sense!