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I think that Napoleon's saying applies, roughly paraphrased, never ascribe to malice what can be explained with incompetence. The reason for Geo restrictions is simply that well before easy shipping, few publishers published outside a geographic area. There were a lot of reasons for that and it makes sense for physical books, but basically it comes down to it's an old business model and dealing with multiple publishers makes financial sense for many successful authors.
The issue of orphaned books, i.e. technically books where no one is sure who actually holds the copyright, but could be expanded to books where the copyright holder is not actively interested in making the book available, is an issue that most will acknowledge, but there simply isn't the political will to craft a solution.
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