Thomas L. Friedman notwithstanding, the world most definitely is not flat when it comes to “earth shaking” new consumer tech products like the iPhone or the Kindle e-book reader. I live in a Kindleless iPhone desert, and I resent it. Those are proprietary gadgets married to local telecommunications carriers, bound by local copyright laws and licensing agreements. They do not work in many / most countries outside the US. I can’t use iTunes, either:

“iTunes is licensed for reproduction of noncopyrighted materials or materials the user is legally permitted to reproduce. Purchases from the iTunes Store are available only in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States….”

Nor Pandora:

“Dear Pandora Visitor,

We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

We will be notifying listeners as licensing agreements are established in individual countries. If you would like to be notified by email when Pandora is available in your country, please enter your email address below. The pace of global licensing is hard to predict, but we have the ultimate goal of being able to offer our service everywhere.

We share your disappointment and greatly appreciate your understanding.”

So I wasn’t surprised by the news that Amazon’s new “international Kindle” has crippled features and higher e-book prices than the US version.

“Newspapers and magazines delivered outside the US will not include photos and other images.”
This even applies to the UK-based newspapers Amazon has signed a deal with, including The Times, The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail The and Independent.

And that’s not the Kindle International’s only limitation. Amazon has also disabled its inbuilt web browser, returning the message that “Due to local restrictions, web browsing is not available for all countries”, when you try to access it.

There’s something Victorian and Colonialist about this. A bazillion-dollar giant like Amazon can’t get it’s act together to operate internationally? I can buy new books on Amazon.com (and pay pretty stiff shipping fees) — but not used books, which can only be sent to a US address. Bookdepository.com in England ships free of charge anywhere in the world.

Okay, e-books are more complicated, since they throw traditional publishing and distribution overboard, but that’s what we pay Amazon’s lawyers for, isn’t it – to figure this stuff out? To flatten the world in step with technology?

Since I can only read about e-books, because they raise so many interesting questions, and because I suspect that this is what museums are going to be publishing in the near future, I decided to put together a roundtable discussion on “More from Less: the e-Book Revolution and Mobile Evolution” at MCN 2009 in Portland, Oregon. If you think this is where we’re going, or if you disagree, join us. Bring your Kindles (I’m dying to actually see one…), Sony e-book readers, e-book-apped iPhones, and opinions.

UPDATE:
Things move so fast in this area, it’s dizzying. Two minutes after posting the above, I saw news that Amazon is releasing a Kindle-for-the-PC application. No e-book reader needed: now that’s an interesting twist from the purveyor of the leading e-book device. Does this hint at Amazon’s intention to phase out the device and start dealing in netbooks?

Let’s see if the PC application will be available internationally (I’ve signed up, and am waiting for the “not available in your country” notice.) n.b. Also not available for Mac, nor for Linux (n.b.b. the Kindle is Linux based). And it won’t deliver magazines or newspapers. Hello?