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Welcome to the world of Law...Like the punchline to the lost helicopter/Microsoft joke, it always give an answer that techncally correct, but may be completely meaningless...
All the country/zone legal agreements were based on the underlying concept of I'm here and you're there and it'll take far more effort for you to get the product from there that it's worth. Like tying the cost of violating a copyright to the plant and equipment cost for producing the physical product. With more to lose that there was to gain, it was self-enforcing. With the Web and Fed-Ex (et.al.) nowadays, the underlying concept is deader that a politician's conscience. You can buy and have delivered virtually anything from anywhere either instaneously (digital delivery) or 2-3 days (physical delivery). And that reality effectively negates country/zone agreements.
The right answer for Hatchette was as following. "We can't control zonal agreements any more. Nobody can. But what we can do is split up all the e-books into blocks for each region, each region getting exclusive control of it's block for the entire globe. What you lose for your former zonal agreement, you will make up in world-wide sales." Too much to expect, I suppose....
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