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It is always easy, and commonly done on these forums, to put the blame solely on the Publishers. Working for a UK publisher we will often have the rights to a book to be produced in the UK while a different publishing company has the rights in the US. These rights are negotiated and sold usually by authors and their agents to maximise their returns from their intellectual property.
This discrepancy in territorial rights does not sit well with the global internet market but are a consequence of the historical set up in the industry. Any publisher, agent and author must have the ability to sell only to the market they have the rights for. Until every publisher is sold worldwide rights for every book, for every format as well then DRM and territorial restrictions will be with us. And that set up will hurt the smaller non US publishers much more than the Harper Collins and Penguins.
As we do not have the Kindle here in the UK I can not buy e-books from Amazon, even though I have a device and could transfer from my PC (No wi-fi). That is not down to territorial rights, that is just down to Amazon in the main.
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