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You can fight for your country but not buy an e-book?
November 4, 2009 | 1:59 am
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By Chris Meadows
That is the situation one soldier finds himself in, according to this MobileRead thread. A US soldier stationed in Iraq has discovered he cannot buy e-books from Sony for his PRS-600 because he is overseas—even though he has a US mailing address and credit card.
He pasted a transcript from his contact with Sony on-line support:
Curtis_ > The eBook Store uses Geo-IP technology to identify where you are located based on the location of your internet service provider (ISP). This is done to ensure that eBooks are only sold to customers who reside in countries where the titles have been cleared for sale.
Curtis_ > Jay, it is required to be in the U.S. to purchase eBooks from the eBook Store using a U.S Credit Card.
Ironically, he could order the physical copy of the book from Amazon or another paper bookseller with no problems—military post offices are usually considered part of the USA for shipping purposes.
Of course, there are still plenty of sources for this soldier to buy books that will work on his device. Baen, for instance, is happy to support our soldiers. But these places may not have specific books he wants.
It is time for the publishing industry to begin straightening out this geographical restriction mess. Hopefully they will get around to it soon.
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Comments:
At least this is consistent. You are supposed to be physically present in the USA to make the purchase. But geo-IP isn’t foolproof and (apparently) easy to appear to be somewhere when you are not.
Eventually someone will wake up to the fact that geographical borders for digital goods make no sense.
He can get free e-books through Operation EBook Drop. Participating authors give their books to deployed troops as a thank-you for their service. Most of the authors have their books on Smashwords, so the books are available in a variety of formats, including for the Sony. Authors create a coupon for a 100% discount for soldiers to use when ordering.
Operation EBook Drop
Hi, Lillie. Operation EBook Drop sounds great, and I hope you can tell us more—but imagine all the nonparticipating writers. Authors are not commodities, in the eyes of readers, and soldiers in Iraq will want to keep up with their favorites. Meanwhile I’m going to contact Sony and see if people there will take the initiative of securing permission for use of e-books in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thanks. David
Just one more reason to stick with real books.
> Just one more reason to stick with real books.
Naw, just one more reason to hope that publishers will come to their senses and end geo restrictions, if they want to make money in an international market.
The copyright interests often extol the glories of globalization, and a little consistency would go a long way.
Thanks,
David
If I was starting a company I would be offering small rental payments to rights holders for all geographical rights unsold. As the vast majority of geographical rights will never be sold, this would offer some income for essentially useless rights. The rental agreements could terminate as soon as the rights holders sold rights permanently. Alternatively, the original rights holders could be eking out these small profits themselves while they waited to land big fish rights sales. But then when you follow the logic to the end you start to wonder what the point of the geo rights sales is. Why don’t the original rights holders just make all the money themselves. I suppose, when ebooks start bringing in more money than books, that is the reality we will tend towards.
@Lillie: Thanks from me for flagging Operation E-book Drop… I hadn’t heard of it before now. I’ve added myself, and Verdant Skies, to the list of available books for our troops.
The services are already looking into providing e-manuals to troops, so there will be more and more laptops and readers out there. Might as well give ‘em something to enjoy in their downtime.