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Regional restrictions are ridiculous. That goes for movies, tv-shows, clothes, software, books -whatever. The world, the marketplace has become truly global.

Yeah. It's a real problem. I've been reading ebooks on my PDA/phone for 11 years now and I've been sticking with the original Palm eReader format (http://www.ereader.com/) while I wait for the format wars to work themselves out. Newsgroups related to ereader/fictionwise have been buzzing for ages about how more and more titles are becoming locked to US-only downloads.

Apparently it's an issue with the publishers and not the retailers. Publishing houses and authors often negotiate different distribution arrangements in different parts of the world (e.g. an author using a different publisher in different parts of the world) so a particular ebook retailer's agreement with a particular publisher might only give it the rights to a particular book for US sales.

This is where I'm really hoping that the might of Apple will sort this out since presumably they have for more resources to go out and acquire the rights to more than just US distribution. This could be a case where a bit of Apple bullying and arrogance could really be in the interest of the consumer if Apple could bludgeon authors and publishers into offering global distribution rights in return for being hosted on the iBook store. Unfortunately the iBooks store doesn't have the clout of iTunes (yet?) and they are still locked in a battle with Kindle right now so I'm not sure that enough of the power lies with Apple vs. the publishers and authors at the moment but this will be interesting to watch.

I strongly suspect that, for legal reasons, the local iBook stores will be filtered according to publishing rights so, even if the US iBook store was up to a million titles by 28th May, that wouldn't mean a UK buyer like me has access to that catalog but will instead have access to only those titles where Apple has the UK rights which I suspect for the most part will be a fairly limited subset of the US catalog.

- Julian
 
Yay!

So much looking forward to this device. Just preordered my 64GB machine today in Australia. As i travel a lot overseas in speaking engagements this will become my main device, all my notes, presentations, materials, books and courses in an easy to read, light format - could not be more happy!!

I am one happy fan-girl that loves the cool aid of apple! :)
 
Regional restrictions are ridiculous. That goes for movies, tv-shows, clothes, software, books -whatever. The world, the marketplace has become truly global.

I'm sittin' here in Denmark with my lovely iPad. I'm ready to buy some books. Unfortunately, "The iBooks application is not available for download in this region". If you buy an AppleTV in Denmark (and a lot of other countries), you can't rent movies for it. You simply can't rent or buy movies through iTunes...

As a consumer, I'm not allowed to pay for some stuff that I'd like to pay for. Now, who has a real interest in this?

Putting an end to regional restrictions should be Steves next big battle! The current "logic" is ridiculous.

I could not agree more...global communications at the speed of light, yet we trudge around on crutches in the market place. A consumer should be able to spend what she wants from wherever she wants to get it. Free market - haha - at whose expense. Internet commerce is the way of the future - it is futile to remain so digitally unattached to it.
 
Regional restrictions are ridiculous. That goes for movies, tv-shows, clothes, software, books -whatever. The world, the marketplace has become truly global.

I'm sittin' here in Denmark with my lovely iPad. I'm ready to buy some books. Unfortunately, "The iBooks application is not available for download in this region". If you buy an AppleTV in Denmark (and a lot of other countries), you can't rent movies for it. You simply can't rent or buy movies through iTunes...

As a consumer, I'm not allowed to pay for some stuff that I'd like to pay for. Now, who has a real interest in this?

Putting an end to regional restrictions should be Steves next big battle! The current "logic" is ridiculous.

I completely agree. As the world is getting smaller and smaller, and more of us travel abroad more frequently, these restrictions need to go away. The sooner, the better.
 
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