In a move likely to horrify publishers and authors, it is suggesting that those restrictions be limited to 12 months after publication and from that point “parallel importation should be freely permitted”.

Please give a little more detail here. Presumably the author would sell his/her rights to several publishers (i.e., in each “territory”) and still receive royalties; it is the publisher of the Aussie version who would get stiffed. Or would this proposal work differently?

How, I wonder, do regulators prevent the sale of e-books across borders? If book selling websites and publisher websites set up barriers to cross-border purchases in order to protect what are almost always higher prices in the domestic market, they are creating the ideal environment for web piracy to flourish.

It is time both regulators and publishers recognize that the Internet is global and that consumers have long since become accustomed to purchasing digital media from around the world. The rules, regulations, and procedures which have been used to build walls around our business in Canada and other countries, do not work for digital books, or digital anything else.

Lets not turn ourselves into another China, trying to “protect” our businesses and people from the outside world. That will not work.

Ric Day says: “How, I wonder, do regulators prevent the sale of e-books across borders?”

It’s probably not too hard. Ever tried ordering MP3s from Amazon.com? You need a US-based address or credit card. Everyone on the web has an IP address, too, which is generally assigned by country, so it’s not hard to tell where a customer comes from.
And let’s not equate the totalitarian Chinese police state and their Great Firewall with national copyright laws, please. Authors and publishers have a right to determine where and how their intellectual property is sold. People don’t have an unfettered “right” to download it just because they want to. Perhaps people should be reminded that they live in a real country, with borders, and laws, and not in some virtual dreamworld.

Paul says: Ever tried ordering MP3s from Amazon.com? You need a US-based address or credit card.
Why bother with Amazon’s restrictions when you can purchase the same music on iTunes without the geographic nonsense?
Paul says: Everyone on the web has an IP address, too, which is generally assigned by country, so it’s not hard to tell where a customer comes from.
Tor and Privoxy are just two examples of simple applications which provide IP anonymity.
Yes, Paul, authors and publishers to have the right to determine where and how sales happen. Perhaps I did not make myself clear. The Internet and e-books afford Canadian publishers the opportunity to sell on a global basis and I believe we should embrace the opportunity, not encumber it with restrictions.
The “virtual dreamworld” comment is silly.

Ric Day says: “The “virtual dreamworld” comment is silly.”

My point is that people on the net tend to think that because they can do something, that it should be done – that the standards of internet commerce or behaviour are automatically acceptable because they are “the future” and are widely practised.

I don’t think that, generally, Canadian publishers have any opposition to selling globally (apart from disadvantages that may exist as a result of the rules imposed by grant agencies that subsidize most Canadian publishers). But there are important cross border issues that need to be considered. For example, if one country decides to limit copyright to 5 yrs, while another keeps it for 50 years, unrestricted internet access will force everyone to accept the lowest copyright protection, by making work accessible for free that should still be protected in some countries, eroding the right of nations such as Canada to decide on their own laws and policies of cultural and intellectual property protection.

“I don’t think that, generally, Canadian publishers have any opposition to selling globally (apart from disadvantages that may exist as a result of the rules imposed by grant agencies that subsidize most Canadian publishers).”

More analysis, please. Which kinds of houses? The large ones? The small ones? Publishers of kids’ books? Text books that would fit curricula in foreign schools? Trade non-fiction? Literary fiction?

And some detail, if you don’t mind, about your own basis of knowledge. You clearly know something about some of the issues involved in publishing as an enterprise. Have you worked for a publisher? Have you published yourself? Do you know publishers? Have you talked with them about the challenges they face and the technology-driven changes that are already taking place in the industry?

What is this, an interrogation?

I think anyone associated with Canadian publishing knows that many publishers distribute books in the US and other countries, and actively pursue the sales of foreign rights. Why would a publishing company not want to sell globally?