And even now
Reg hacks are patiently waiting for the first malfunctioning Kindle 2 battery, just for the headlines.
Amazon's Kindle tablet will be called the Fire and be based on the same core technology as RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook, it has been claimed a day ahead of the retailer's big announcement. That's according to Tech Crunch, which claims that while the Fire will be shown off on stage by CEO Jeff Bezos, punters won't get their mitts …
just kidding,
does this mean that they will open their AppStore to the rest of the world? or will it be another "USofA" only product? As it is, I can't even download their Kindle application on my Galaxy S2!
off-topic: Why are _digital_books_ regional locked? I can buy the physical copy of some books, but when I try to buy the kindle version, I am told that it is not available to me because of where I am trying to buy it from! Come-on Amazon, putting a regional lock on books? this is low, even for you.
Blame the publishers for region locking. Or remove the DRM.
Blame publishers for only allowing an e-book license to be lent once in it's lifetime - if you're lucky to get even that.
Blame publishers for expiring library e-books licenses so they have to be re-licensed after a number of years.
As for the tiny share of money that goes to an author from the sale of an e-book license....
Annoying as it is you can't blame Amazon for region locks, it's the dead tree publishers who haven't woken up to the fact that parcelling ebook rights out on geographical lines makes no sense whatsoever, and just pushes people towards cracked downloads.
It would be nice if these idiots actually looked outside their little cartels and noticed that this hasn't worked for the music and film industries, but that's probably too much to ask.
..but I would think this is down to distribution deals/rights.
Personally I would think Amazon would prefer to be able to distribute across the globe after negotiating a price, but I can see publishing houses, (larger ones - and maybe regional laws mandating this being in place), stating that they will NOT deal unless regional locking was in place. This will mainly be for the big sellers, the ones which will obviously sell and because the framework being in place, would apply to the rest.
I could be wrong.
When you buy a physical book, the object already exists , and is covered by the publishers locally obtained right to print copies of that book, even if the book is then subsequently sent elsewhere.
When you buy an E-book, this is classified as "publishing" a copy of the book in the country the purchaser is in, so the local publisher in that country has to be the one to make electronic copies available. If you were buying ebooks 3-4 years ago this was pretty much ignored, but they cracked down on it once ebook readers started to get popular.
I think its also the case that electronic book rights may have to be purchased seperatly to physical printing, so even if the local publisher can provide print editions, they may not have (or want to buy) the electronic rights.
Amazon just obey the current regulatory framework when they do or dont sell ebooks in a particular country.
Well you can get their kindle app from the regular Android market place. Also it's not necessarily Amazon but the rights holders such as the publisher being different in two different regions and having differing opinions on eBooks in general.
Of course with a little work you can easily circumvent the region lock and purchase direct from the states should the deal be cheaper.
I'm in the EU and have downloaded Amazon's Kindle application on my Galaxy S2 from Google's Android store.
From my tests it appears that Amazon's e-book files are NOT themselves region locked, but the purchasing funnel on their website is. I suspect this has more to do with the publishers than Amazon. It is possible to change the region on your Amazon account.
It might run Android but my expectation is the thing will be locked down so it only works with Amazon's app store, Amazon's music store, Amazon's book store and Amazon's video store. Unsigned apps won't be allowed AT ALL. Apps which contravene Amazon's arbitrary rules won't be permitted on the app store.
I am expecting that if Amazon do squeeze users that tight that it won't be long for someone to crack these tablets and install something like CyanagenMod on it. Especially if Ice Cream Sandwich finally turns up in an open source form.