Kindle UK

You’ve obviously been dwelling in a parallel universe if you haven’t heard of Amazon’s electronic book device, known as Kindle. Find out more about the device on the amazon.com site or Google the blogosphere for reviews and critiques. In case you have been elsewhere, Kindle is a portable, wireless device that should give you access to 90000 books, blogs, and newspapers, almost at the tap of a screen, if you can find somewhere to buy one, that is.

But, just try getting your hands on a Kindle in the UK. According to Phil Bradley (no relation, other Bradleys are available) aside from the fact that Kindle is sold out on the .com, Amazon has some serious international issues under its .co.uk address where Kindle the wireless book is not even mentioned. This is nothing unusual for an electronic device.

There are all kinds of totally stupid international trade laws that prevent certain electronic goods from being sold in specific forms in the UK, EU etc that are widely and readily available elsewhere (i.e. the US and Japan).

When I bought a video camera in the UK a few years back, I discovered the only way I could connect and use it for digital transfer to and from my PC was to do a hardware mod. Not so the US model, which came with bidirectionality as standard. The company press office told me it was a specific restriction on the product in the EU that limited it’s functionality to preclude exclusivity of video camera vendors. In other words, it could be sold as a video camera, but not as a digital stills camera, which is the additional function that bidirectionality would give the device. See, I told you it was stupid.

Just remember, it’s the same bunch of anti-anti-competition laws that led Microsoft into court for selling an operating system with a built in internet browser and other similar legal japes. All these legislative escapades must have the lawyers rubbing their hands all the way to the bank. And, it doesn’t matter which universe you’re in, you know that to be a universal truth.