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I can imagine how difficult it might be to implement geo-restrictions in software and how many loose ends they have to tie up. They have to consider the rules of the publisher and of the publisher's contract with the author as well as the laws of the various countries, for each book.
I used to be a programmer for a multinational financial corporation which owned a lot of mutual funds among other things and every share we sold as well as every investment made by the various funds had to be vetted according to the charter of the fund, the laws of the state the fund resided in as well as the laws of the nation and state where it was being purchased. This was a huge undertaking. It can get incredibly complex. Knowing that it was impossible to always get it right we had to always err conservatively and even that was extremely complex.
I imagine Amazon faces something of the same thing with automating geo-restrictions although the penalty for getting it wrong is less severe. It's entirely understandable that mistakes will be made. In fact it's inconceivable that they wouldn't make mistakes.
Our company wrote our software in-house for almost everything. We had one of the earliest automation systems and certainly the most comprehensive and sophisticated one in the business. But the vetting of transactions was never considered for in-house automation. We used third party software for that. It was just too big a job to do in-house. It's the only software we wouldn't do ourselves.
Barry
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