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Hi folks,
I live in Israel and thought I'd share this cautionary tale to illustrate the issue:
Virtually all English language books in Israel, at least until about 5 years ago were available from just one source -- a chain called Steimatzky. I'm talking about print books here not ebooks. That's because Steimatzky had paid various major publishers for the contracts to English language books here. A few years back, someone decided to try doing an end run around Steimatzky. They arranged to purchase various popular paperbacks in bulk in the United States and ship them in a container to be sold in this country. Even with the added costs, they still undersold Steimatzky. Steimatzky screamed bloody murder and filed suit to prevent the sale. I believe they were successful in their suit, though the market has been opened up somewhat since then (although I find English language books to be at least twice the price here regardless of where I buy them -- Steimatzky or elsewhere).
That was one impetus for me to buy an ebook reader. I use a VPN to visit bookstores in the States and as an American expat, I maintain an address and checking account back in the States, so I have no trouble at all with getting whatever I want. I also now have access to the New York Public library (I'm from New York) and all their available ebooks.
That said, the above story, regarding paperback books should illustrate the issue. It's the contracts, sometimes long term which publishers have agreed to long ago that create all these problems.
It's no different than Hulu or Netflix which also georestrict their content for the same reason. It's not that they don't want to stream all over the world and make money from it. It's that they're restricted from doing so by legal issues (though in the case of Hulu, they are quite vindictive about it, even going so far as to block VPN access when they can find the IP addresses for them, though that's another story).
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