Sorry, but that is rubbish. If you do this, then only let kiwis buy because of restrictions and being a proponent of such then you have limited the opporunity severely.

You have also buried your head in the sand for many years, if just getting to it now….

Supporting authors’ and publishers’ rights to determine territorial restrictions does absolutely nothing to limit that opportunity. It’s not the same as burying our heads in the sand and pretending there isn’t a big world out there to sell to. Quite the contrary.

If there were none perhaps they’d waste less money on bidding huge amounts on books – might still be large, but not as much.

Dan Brown may have the clout to do whatever he watns – but what about no-name author X that they just signed?

e.g. ‘You give us worldwide non-exlusive ebook rights, or get lost’?

Changes are needed but the simply to abandon all restrictions will affect more than just authors. To be a consumer (i.e., a purchase of goods or services), one must have an income. Generally that income comes from a job. Without geographical restrictions a lot of people would lose jobs and thus would be unable to consume.

As it is the U.S. publishing industry is shrinking — not in books published but in jobs. Why? Because of consolidation and the outsourcing of work to the lowest cost country. For example, an increasing number of editorial jobs in the U.S. are disappearing because an American editor cannot work as cheaply, for example, as an Indian editor. The cost of living and wage scales are simply not comparable. Years ago there hundreds more typesetting companies and booksellers in the U.S. than there are today for similar reasons — YET, the American consumer is expected to buy books. Hard to do without an income or without disposable income.

Geographical restirctions need to be updated but not eliminated. They currently do serve a purpose; they decelerate the trend of eliminating publishing sector jobs.

I would add this: Not all of the problems of geographical restrictions lies in the copyright laws; a lot of it lies in author contracts. Not many authors are willing to give worldwide rights to a single publisher, especially not the Dan Brown bestseller types. It is much more profitable for the authors to auction geographical rights. The point being that even if copyright laws were changed to eliminate geographical restrictions, the consumer would see no change absent a change in author contracts.