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The problem is more complex than just if it's the author's/agent's fault or if it's the publisher's fault.
For some titles, especially back-list titles, it was common practice at the time for an agent to sell at a minimum UK/Commonwealth rights and North American rights separately. Sometimes Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, etc. rights were also done separately. This is still the case with some books/authors (eg. Kelley Armstrong's book "Omens" is licensed in English with Random House in Canada, Little, Brown - Sphere in the UK & Dutton in the US), but more publishers are trying to get world English language rights (allowing the author/agent to still license foreign language editions separately) or complete world rights.
The problem is that some of these publishers that do buy world English rights don't exercise all of those rights and make the book available worldwide even though they have licensed those rights.
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