Geographic Restrictions On Digital Purchases

This started in another thread and I wanted to get other people's opinion.

I buy a lot of books, music and movies from different Amazon sites around the world. I also use other vendors. I just pick out what I want and give them a credit card and they send me the item. At no point does anyone restrict my purchases by my country of residence or where my credit card it from. I can just find the store or site that has the book/music/movie I am looking for at the best price and buy it, no questions asked, no copyright issues.

However, if I want to buy a digital book from Amazon or a video or song from iTunes or another vendor I am limited to one particular store based on my country of residence or where my credit card is from. This is regardless of whether that site or store has the merchandise I want or the best price.

If a DTB comes out first in another country no one would dream of not selling it to you and shipping it you where ever you might be.

So why should digital media have all these limitations on them? Why shouldn't a Canadian reader be able to buy from the US store or a US reader from the Australian store when you can do it in other formats.

Why shouldn't I be able to buy French videos from the appropriate sites since they are not available in my country of residence instead of having to get them on disc

It would be nice, but the way the contracts and laws are currently written, it doesn't work that way.

Just because you want it does not make it legal.

I happened to be on the site shortly after this post was being submitted, and it addresses an issue that absolutely infuriates me. After getting the Kindle app on my Ipad, I merrily went to Amazon UK, from which I have purchased many DVDs and books, to see what goodies I could download from the British marketplace. I was so disappointed in not being able to purchase Kindle books from the site. As you pointed out, Satellite Girl, we can buy the hard copy of any book on AmazonUK, so why, why, why, are we denied the Kindle versions? Surely it would be only beneficial for Amazon and publishers to broaden their availability. This issue and the removal of the "Buy at Kindle Store" button from the Ipad app are my 2 complaints about Amazon/Apple right now.

The issue isn't Amazon or Apple - it's with the copyright/distribution laws in each country. Purchases of tangible items (books, CDs, DVDs, clothing, etc.) are treated as if you are in the country of origin. In other words, the laws treat those purchases as if you are standing in a store in that country - of course they can't/don't restrict those purchases - but, they may require you to pay some form of tax or duty when returning to your home country.

Digital goods are treated as if you are making the purchase in your own country - which you are. However, this time, there is no physical item to send from the country of origin. So, if the publisher doesn't have distribution rights in your country, they can't send you the digital content. Unfortunately, it may take a while for the laws to catch up to reality.

The thing that is most infuriating is when you add books to your wish list fully intending to purchase them later, but all of a sudden they aren't available to your country anymore. I've had that happen numerous time. When I go on the Kobo site (for Canada) they are now available there. So I suspect what is happening is that Kobo is offering publishers higher margins to sell on their site and therefore they are yanking them from Kindle. I guess if I really want the most choice, I'll have to buy a Kobo as well. It's most frustrating. There should be no difference between physical media and electronic media.

>> In other words, the laws treat those purchases as if you are standing in a store in that country - of course they can't/don't restrict those purchases - but, they may require you to pay some form of tax or duty when returning to your home country.

Digital goods are treated as if you are making the purchase in your own country - which you are. However, this time, there is no physical item to send from the country of origin. <<

The extremes that these laws are taken to make absolutely no sense to me.

Even if I, a US resident, were to travel to England and actually stand in a store somewhere, I still would not be allowed to buy a British ebook not available in the US. And apparently it isn't possible for the ebook to be put onto a physical medium, like a CD, for me to buy (unlike music, which is usually available in both CD and pure digital form).

The laws really need to change to catch up with the digital age. The law should change to say that ebook purchases are made at the point of sale not at the buyer's location. Send emails to your legislator about changing the laws. At least future book contracts should specifically give worldwide electronic rights to one publisher.

Well, that's a bit of a problem... no nation's legislation can give rights worldwide. US law is not binding on Canada, which is not binding on the UK, etc.

What irritates me is that I actually WENT over to the countries where I wanted to buy kindle books from. I still couldn't download books from the countries I traveled to. LAME!

Hi guys I have the following piece on another thread but I feel it's more relevent here.

Here's another interesting point regarding digital rights.
I live in the REPUBLIC OF iRELAND, my friend lives in Northern Ireland -10 mins walk away (but across the boarder).
I'm directed to http://Amazon.com for my kindle purchases but he gets directed to the http://Amazon.co.uk site.
OK ,so living in N.IRELAND he has a UK address and I've an Irish address.
But why are we not both directed to http://Amazon.co.uk.
Also, what is really frustrating as an Irish user of the kindle is that I cannot download any of the Kindle games (which are always in the 100 bestsellers). I also cannot download blogs.
So in summary, I cannot get the full benefit from the kindle because as an Irish user I'm directed to Amazon .com which will not allow the access to certain titles /games & I cannot buy these titles from http://Amazon.co.uk either!
I feel short changed!

I have no actual knowledge of the relevant laws. Are all of these restrictions based in law, or are some of them just agreements or contracts between publishers in the different countries?

For instance, in my example of actually travelling to England and wanting to buy an ebook available there but not in the US, does anyone know the wording of the law that forbids this?

The availability of books is dependent on the billing address for your credit card. No matter where you may be physically, as long as the account your Kindle is registered to was established with a US card, you buy books through http://Amazon.com and you buy those available to US customers.

Someone on another site tried to game the system by switching cards and then changing her location. She got an e-mail from Amazon asking questions about when she'd moved and requesting proof of her change of residence. She decided to switch back to her real information, rather than risk losing her account. (I'll try to find the post for the exact wording - for those who know it, it's on Ravelry.)

The thing that irritates me about this is that it is not protecting the content, the authors or the copyright holder's right, it is about protecting a distribution channel and a territory. It is a mechanism for holding down competition. The author's or content holders actually come out worse because it cuts down on the number of people they can sell to.

Eventually it will all work itself out but for the moment its irritating

Some people above have said this a legal issue in the sense that digital distribution comes under your country's laws.

I wonder about that and would suggest the one and only factor involved is the digital rights specified by the publishers. For some reason they are a lot tougher with these than they are with paper books.

"Well, that's a bit of a problem... no nation's legislation can give rights worldwide. "

It can, amongst the countries that are signatories to the Berne Convention on copyrights. There are also other international treaties and agreements, e.g. the AUSFTA (Australia-US Free Trade Agreement) which require harmonization of laws - often (usually?) in favour of disadvantaging the consumer (e.g. Australia now has the Mickey Mouse lifetime on copyright - gee, thanks, Disney Corp.).

"The laws really need to change to catch up with the digital age. The law should change to say that ebook purchases are made at the point of sale not at the buyer's location. "

But that's the whole point of the difference - they *are* taking into account the realities of digital age. Publishing rights are sold for geographical regions, and they are easy to enforce for digital content (for which only *licenses* are sold). For physical goods retailers or wholesalers buy them (abiding to that restrictions - Croatian bookshop cannot sell US-only physical books), but once initially bought, the object is free from restrictions and the owner can resell it as they see fit.

If they could, publishers would like to enforce the geographical restrictions on physical media, too. For example, note the existence of region codes on DVDs.

It is content right holders who sell those rights piecemeal. Nobody is stopping them from selling digital publishing rights worldwide.

The odd thing is that most authors seem to have no idea of what rights they have or don't have.

I shouldn't say "most" because my sample is limited, but over the past several years I've written to at least twenty or thirty authors -- not blockbuster authors, but series authors with several books each, published by mainstream publishers. Most of them have been kind enough to respond and, without exception, they've all said that they had no idea if or when their books would be available as ebooks, and in which countries. They all said they supposed it was up to their publishers (actually, singular publisher for each author). A few mentioned that they had no idea what was in their contracts in regards to ebooks.

I wasn't too surprised in the early days of ebooks, but a few of the answers were from this year!

@ M. Francis

Thanks. I knew that was the case, I'm still just trying to wrap my head around the meaning of it all.

I'm trying to imagine a bunch of authors, publishers, lawyers, legislators, and diplomats from various countries sitting around a table and coming up with this mess. (Not to mention Mickey Mouse and his lobbyists). There should be a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta written to explain it.

I know that digital rights are usually separate from print book rights now, but I don't know where putting books on CDs fits in, if at all. And I guess an awful lot of backlists are now subject to behind the scenes battles and settlements, with neither side daring to let a court decide who has the rights

I guess all it would take is money (which I don't have, more's the pity) to get around the restrictions legally. Lots of families have residences, bank accounts, etc. in more than one country. You'd just have to have different family members set up Amazon accounts in each country, with multiple Kindles that could be swapped around. Most people here seem to think it's ok to lend ebooks as often as you want, as long as you lend the whole Kindle; I've heard that some people keep Kindles, instead of print books, in their guest rooms for their visitors to read.

I would like to encourage EVERYONE who has a problem with Amazon's geographic restrictions on the sale of ebooks to actually email Amazon directly and tell them of their concerns. Discussing it among ourselves is interesting, but I'm not sure it actually contributes to solving the problem as Amazon may or may not read the discussion.
Public pressure on Amazon is more likely to succeed in getting some changes made. So please all send emails to Amazon today!
The quickest way to email them from this page is to click 'Help' (top righthand corner), then click the button 'Contact Us' on the righthand side.
Who knows if it will work, but it's definitely worth a try!

As long as publishers don't have the rights (or can't be bothered to deal with international rights), there is nothing Amazon can do. I'm sure Amazon would be happy to sell whatever the publishers allow them to sell.

I've e-mailed both authors (or their agent, if an author's contact data isn't public) and publishers about certain books I've wanted - books that I know exist as legally available ebooks for Americans. One author e-mailed back and so did her agent - they'd looked into it and said that they're working to get her books available for Europe "in the near future" (it was several months ago; hasn't happened yet, but at least they are aware of the issue). Another publisher hasn't responded to two e-mails I've sent, so I can only assume that they aren't interested at all.

It's especially irritating when you live in a small non-English speaking country, as unless the author has sold worldwide rights to the publisher, there's very little chance of any other publisher (local or otherwise) picking up the rights for my territory. Well, for mainstream books, someone might buy the translation rights eventually, but as I prefer to read books in their original language whenever possible, this isn't exactly helpful, and it will more likely than not only be for physical books anyway.

I really do believe that the publishers (and authors) are only harming themselves with this in the long run, as regional restrictions are currently one major reason for ebook piracy. And no matter how much the authors and publishers cry about how this harms them, they can't really seriously complain about "lost sales" if they aren't providing those people with a legit way to buy the book. Obviously there will be people who just won't buy it, then (and won't jump through hoops or take up residence abroad just in order to be able to buy a book), but some will and do just go "well, if you don't WANT me to BUY it, fine, I'll just GET it, then". (Please note that I'm not saying this is the right way to go about it; I'm just saying that it's what many people do now and will keep doing if this situation continues.)

I'll just add one consideration that people might not have thought of, and that's the preservation of long-standing business relationships. In many cases, UK- and US-based publishers long ago appointed distributors or agents in international territories, who were responsible for holding stock locally for rapid supply to retailers, placing and paying for advertising, managing relationships with local media, hosting visiting authors, dealing with local authors and agents, etc. - all of which required substantial investment and staffing.

I wouldn't want to be the person responsible for telling those distributors, "So long, and thanks for all the work! It's been great, but now with digital distribution, we don't need you any more". Especially when some of them are family companies (possibly small publishers in their own right) and personal relationships that go back many years.

And in fact, they are needed. While there's no physical distribution involved, publishers may still wish to use local distributors for promotion, etc., and they may wish to track regional sales so that they can pay commissions. Unfortunately, that may mean that for some regions, in which there is no distributor, a book is not available - I'd have to say this is really a matter of oversight.

So, don't forget the human faces behind those inconvenient business relationships. I know it's annoying, but they don't do it just to piss*you* off.

Les, following on from what you've said, I've found a number of paper books that have a different publisher in the UK than in the US, and that the digital rights aren't held by either of them, but yet another two companies, so the whole issue seems to be quite complicated. Another thing that I find strange is that UK citizens buying their books from Amazon UK are actually getting them from Amazon in Luxembourg and paying that country 15% VAT, whereas Luxembourg citizens themselves have to buy their ebooks from the .com site. To make it even more complicated, if we were actually receiving the ebooks from http://Amazon.co.uk we'd have to pay 20% tax, so we're better off individually but not collectively as the money is going out of the country.

"I'm trying to imagine a bunch of authors, publishers, lawyers, legislators, and diplomats from various countries sitting around a table and coming up with this mess. (Not to mention Mickey Mouse and his lobbyists). There should be a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta written to explain it.

Actually, it probably would have been better if it had happened that way. Well, maybe if it happened that way without MM......I think part of the problem is that digital media took off so fast that the people involved in creating and distributing it are still trying to figure out how to cope with it. I don't think they've even got a real handle on what all the issues are, let alone have concrete solutions for them. I think this has probably happened before as new technology has come along; it's the rate of change that makes it problematic for everybody.