Re: US consumer purchase of international editions

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Oh, agree entirely with the diagnosis.  It's the remedy that 
eludes me.

Arbitration is growing.  A couple undergraduates a few years ago 
at UCSD starting purchasing English-language science texts in 
China (with Chinese-language covers) and reselling them to their 
classmates. Undergraduates.  I can only see this situation 
worsening (or improving, depending on your point of view).

Copyright is screwy. Even people who defend it, as I do, know it 
is screwy.

Joe Esposito


On 9/23/09 2:39 PM, "Toby.GREEN@oecd.org" <Toby.GREEN@oecd.org> wrote:

> Joe,
>
> No surprise that most books are sold via bricks'n'mortar stores,
> but I still don't see why the business model for physical books
> necessarily rules out a global approach to market so that
> customers can use channels to buy at the best price/service point
> that suits them. Clearly, when customers learn that a 180 dollar
> book can be bought for 50 elsewhere, someone will find a way to
> facilitate an arbitrage. Publishers who think they can hide from
> this remind me of King Canute's advisors (for it was they who
> provoked this much-maligned King to demonstrate the power of the
> laws of nature by sitting on the beach in front of the incoming
> tide). But, you're quite right, it will take time, a long time,
> before there's change.
>
> Toby
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu <owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
> Sent: Wed Sep 23 04:33:56 2009
> Subject: Re: US consumer purchase of international editions
>
> Toby,
>
> This is one of those areas where the vision and the reality are
> very far apart. A global copyright regime at this time (yes,
> times change) would actually reduce distribution of books and
> other published material.
>
> Why this should be so is that the bulk of formally published
> information at this time is (a) still in book form (b) still in
> print and (c) targeted primarily to consumers.  If it were
> otherwise, that is, if we were talking about academic "papers" or
> scientific datasets--or for that matter, corporate data, such as
> market research reports--we could throw geographical rights
> issues out the window.  But most publications are sold in bricks
> and mortar stores, not from a Web site.  It is hard for people
> who work with digital media all day to realize that Barnes &
> Noble in the U.S. sells three times as many books as Amazon, and
> even Borders, which has been reduced to a struggling enterprise,
> is selling perhaps half again what Amazon sells. Outside of
> mobile markets, the U.S. has the highest percentage of digital
> sales anywhere.  I am reminded of William Gibson's wisecrack, to
> the effect that the future is already here; it's just not evenly
> distributed.
>
> Since publishing is still largely a print and bricks-and-mortar
> activity, those geographical rights issues are important.  I
> doubt Random House has much of a distribution mechanism in
> Thailand, or that Bloomsbury is doing blockbuster business with
> its own sales force in Paraguay. These geographical rights issues
> are going to be with us for some time.  Were they to disappear
> before a fully digital infrastructure were in place, many books
> simply wouldn't get beyond their home territory.
>
> We can look forward to years, perhaps decades, of complicated,
> frustrating copyright issues.  It will give us something to
> do--paraphrasing Dylan, when we are tired of ourselves and
> Facebook.
>
> Joe Esposito
>
> On 9/21/09 7:20 PM, "Toby.GREEN@oecd.org" <Toby.GREEN@oecd.org> wrote:
>
>> This case is a wonderful illustration of something that has been
>> bothering me for some time. Next month, at the Frankfurt Book
>> Fair, rights managers from publishers around the world will be
>> making deals based on geographic territories. In a pre-Internet
>> age it made sense to let someone local handle a book's marketing
>> and distribution. However, in a world where ICT has
>> created/facilitated the Internet, POD and just-in-time business
>> models, I think this geographic-based business model is going to
>> fail. This is going to have big implications for the publishing
>> industry (and for Book Fairs) because consumers will not put up
>> with significant price differentials such as the one detailed
>> below when it is so easy today to learn about lower prices and to
>> purchase from low-priced markets.
>>
>> Claudia asks from a copyright angle - how does one address this
>> question? In my view, quite simply. Any copyright owner now has
>> to consider the market from a global perspective, not as a series
>> of local markets. Boundaries will be marked, if at all, by
>> language, not by geography. This means changing distribution
>> arrangements - using local partners if necessary - under a global
>> copyright regime.
>>
>> Of course, this is going to produce challenges. Costs are not the
>> same everywhere nor are purchasing powers (a US student might
>> afford $180, a Malaysian probably cannot - but then again, a US
>> student from a poor background may be less able to pay $50 than a
>> well-off Malaysian - reinforcing the point that geographic
>> boundaries are pretty artificial when it comes to markets!) so
>> prices won't be the same everywhere, but the gaps between them
>> will close. This is going to be a big challenge for book
>> publishers - a major cultural and operational shift. But it's
>> entirely possible, I would have thought. After all, the world's
>> scholarly journal and book publishers have been operating on a
>> global copyright basis for decades.
>>
>> Toby Green
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
>> [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of claudia holland
>> Sent: 20 September, 2009 4:23 AM
>> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
>> Subject: US consumer purchase of international editions
>>
>> I was recently contacted by a parent who had purchased his
>> college-aged child a textbook from an online source. He bought a
>> hard copy mathematics textbook through a vendor represented on
>> Amazon.com. The online information did not indicate that the book
>> was an international edition of a Pearson publication that was
>> "illegal" to purchase for use within the US or Canada. When the
>> parent received the shrink-wrapped text, there was a notice
>> plastered inside the wrapping on the book itself with language
>> warning consumers about these limitations of use. The book came
>> from Malaysia, apparently, and was advertised at less than
>> one-third the cost of the text in the US (~$50 vs ~$180). No
>> wonder he bought it.
>>
>> The parent was perturbed for several reasons: 1) the exorbitant
>> mark-up for the same exact book available in the US, 2) the lack
>> of consumer information from the Malaysian vendor (& the fact it
>> was shipped to the US at all, given the warning), and 3) the lack
>> of concern on the part of Amazon.com whose service was being used
>> by the Malaysian vendor. As a copyright educator, how does one
>> address this dilemma? Students and their parents want to do the
>> ethical thing and purchase a work from the rightful content
>> owner. In this case, they found out they are being fleeced by
>> those who scream the loudest about their distribution rights!
>>
>> Claudia Holland