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Amazon Kindle e-books question

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15 messages over 2 pages: 1
Chris13
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 Message 9 of 15
10 January 2014 at 12:34pm | IP Logged 
Thank you for the swift replies!

I wasn't sure if it would be illegal or not as once you buy a book, you've purchased it and should have the right to give it away or trade it. I realise that the laws governing these things can be very strange and nonsensical at times.

It was worth the enquiry.

I do like the idea of asking publishers to allow Amazon to sell a wider variety of books in various languages to be sold outside of the select few countries you may be able to purchase them.
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Jeffers
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 Message 10 of 15
10 January 2014 at 2:26pm | IP Logged 
Of course the rules for electronic copies of things can be odd. The important point is
that if I give or lend a book to someone, I no longer have it. Interestingly, Amazon has
ways of lending your kindle books, but I haven't explored this yet.
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emk
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 Message 11 of 15
10 January 2014 at 3:27pm | IP Logged 
Ebook swapping is definitely against forum rules, unless you have the necessary legal rights. Please be nice to our administrator, and respect his wishes in this matter. Thank you.

As for ordering Kindle books from another country:

1. It's not allowed by default, because the publishers won't allow Amazon to do it, or because the authors won't allow the publishers to allow Amazon to do it. Historically, authors have sold per-country rights individually, because this ends up roughly doubling their income in many cases (at least for modestly successful US authors). The system is still slowly changing, and more publishers are bidding for "world electronic rights" (for the untranslated version) for just this reason.

2. Yes, you can switch the country associated with your Kindle, and supply the address of friends in the country. This will work for maybe a few days before Amazon emails you for passport/residency paperwork and switches you back to the "correct" country. Basically, as long as you have a foreign shipping address, a foreign network address, or a foreign credit card, Amazon will figure it out.

3. You can obtain a foreign shipping address, subscribe to a VPN service to hide your network location, and either obtain a foreign credit card or a bunch of gift cards (which are themselves locked to a specific country, so make sure you get French gift cards for Amazon.fr, for example). This appears to work relatively well. But remember, be careful—anything which allows Amazon to detect your real country may get your account switched back. So this involves a certain amount of "spy vs spy", if you will.

And yes, I do find all this to be rather stupid. I want to give money to French authors, for the very sensible reason that it will encourage them to write more books. But overseas Kindle customers are still a very tiny market, and it's taking everybody a while to sort out the necessary legal agreements.

Edited by emk on 10 January 2014 at 3:27pm

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Ogrim
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 Message 12 of 15
10 January 2014 at 3:32pm | IP Logged 
Chris13 wrote:
Thank you for the swift replies!

I wasn't sure if it would be illegal or not as once you buy a book, you've purchased it and should have the right to give it away or trade it. I realise that the laws governing these things can be very strange and nonsensical at times.


The problem with digital content is that you can easily copy it, and each copy is as good as the original. If you buy a physical book and sell it or give it to a friend, you are no longer in posession of the book. If you copy an e-book, you can give it away and still keep yours.

As a matter of fact, you do not own the e-books you buy on Amazon. According to Amazon's Kindle Store terms of use, "Kindle content is licensed, not sold". Should you attempt to break the DRM security block or transfer your purchase to another device, Amazon may legally "revoke your access to the Kindle Store and the Kindle Content without refund of any fees."

This article from the Guardian tells of the experience a Norwegian woman had of Amazon wiping her account and blocking her access to the e-books she had bought.
I do understand that authors, publishers and retailers want to ensure that they get paid for the products, but it is rather disturbing that you are not in control over a product you have "bought".

By the way, if you buy music on i-Tunes, do you own it or is it only licensed as well?
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Chris13
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 Message 13 of 15
10 January 2014 at 3:37pm | IP Logged 
I'd like to point out that I was not trying to break any forum rules, nor will I break any. This is partly why I added the last part to my past about ramifications, to see if it is acceptable or not.
Now that I know it is not allowed and, more importantly, would also be illegal I'll definitely not be doing so anyway.

It appears the only solution to widening the array of foreign books is patience.
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Mohave
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 Message 14 of 15
10 January 2014 at 3:54pm | IP Logged 
Amazon kindle does allow one to legally lend a book for 14 days, so with some ground rules, this could be
done.

From the amazon.com site:   "You can lend a Kindle book to another reader for up to 14 days. The borrower
does not need to own a Kindle device and can read the book after downloading a free Kindle reading app.
Note: A book can only be loaned one time. Magazines and newspapers are currently not available for
lending."


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geoffw
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 Message 15 of 15
10 January 2014 at 8:00pm | IP Logged 
It looks like perhaps the OP has checked out of this discussion, but there are still
people interested in the topic.

I believe the short answer to most questions is: you might be able to get the e-books
you want, but it's probably going to involve going to a vendor other than amazon and
getting ePub books, not kindle books. The relevant resources vary based on what
language you are interested in. I have found resources for French, German, Dutch and
DK/NO/SE; if you're interested in one of these in particular, I can provide details.

If you're one of the Harry Potter fans out there, a number of other languages recently
became available at shop.pottermore.com, as well.

For people who use amazon.com (and not .de, .fr, etc.), this year has seen a big upswing
in the number of German kindle books that are available, at least as far as books I'm
interested in. I haven't seen much movement on French kindle books yet, or any other
language that isn't English or Spanish.

Edited by geoffw on 10 January 2014 at 8:15pm



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