It is widely seen as a serious problem that European as well as international customers who have bought an ebook from one of the international ebook retailers implicitly subscribe to this retailer as their sole future ebook On the Interoperability supplier, i.e. in effect, they forego buying future ebooks from any other supplier. This is a threat to the qualified European book distribution infrastructure and hence the European book culture, since subscribers to one of these of eBook Formats ebook ecosystems cannot buy future ebooks from privately owned community-located bricks & mortar booksellers engaging in ebook retailing. This view is completely in line with the Digital Agenda of the European Commission calling in Pillar II for “an effective interoperability Prof. Christoph Bläsi between IT products and services to build a truly digital society. Europe must ensure that new IT devices, applications, data repositories and services interact seamlessly anywhere – just like the Internet.” Prof. Franz Rothlauf This report was commissioned from Johannes Gutenberg University Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz – Germany Mainz by the European and International Booksellers Federation. EIBF is very grateful to its sponsors, namely the Booksellers Association of Denmark, the Booksellers Association of the Netherlands and the Booksellers Association of the UK & Ireland, whose financial contribution made this project possible. April 2013 European and International Booksellers Federation rue de la Science 10 – 1000 Brussels – Belgium –
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