How To Avoid Ebook Restrictions
The Kindle might finally be on sale in Australia, but geographic restrictions mean that like pretty much every other ebook reader to date, Australians don’t get the same range of titles or discounts our overseas brethren enjoy. Ebook blog BookBee outlines a way to access US-only ebooks on PCs and iPhones.
In a method that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever purchased songs from a non-Australian iTunes store or even just tried to get tickets from a site that doesn’t recognise overseas buyers, the essential trick is to enter a fake address but a valid credit card. That doesn’t always work (many sites perform full and proper address validation), but according to BookBee, both MobiPocket for the PC and Shortcovers for the iPhone don’t seem to object. While the publishers might complain that’s not entirely fair, it’s got to beat a widespread outbreak of ebook piracy.
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Comments
If the Australian rights-holders of books (or any media for that matter) actually created a legal way to get digital versions that work on popular devices (which considering the amount of different formats that devices such as the iPhone/iPod, Windows mobile, etc support would not be hard) many people would be more than likely to buy them in an Australian store.
Until then we shall all buy them by pretending to be from the US.
Until then the local rights-holders shall also miss out on our money. Some people will never learn.
Yes, I’ve never understood why the publishers think the idea that preventing us buying their products legally is a GOOD idea! Um, hello, anybody home in there?