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Harry. Nice to see Adam Smith is alive and well. Supply and demand works well where there is real competition. Unfortunately, I would argue this is not the case with large publishers and agency pricing. Large publishing has had its first case of competition for a long while with Amazon, and doesn't much like it.
So far as geographical restrictions are concerned, even if they are necessary in some cases, which is doubtful, it is difficult to see how there could be such necessity in the case of developed nations. Even with your Indian example, it is arguable that if the ebook can be profitably sold at a lower price in India that lower price is the appropriate price everywhere.
In any case, it doesn't matter. Geographical restrictions, even if necessary, are simply not practical. Like it or not, the internet has created one worldwide market for ebooks. The technology simply does not exist to enforce these restrictions effectively. To do so would require such draconian laws and enforcement techniques as to be completely out of proportion to the vested interests they would seek to protect.
And Tubemonkey. I agree with your post. I too simply do not buy overpriced ebooks. I have found there are some very good indies available at very reasonable prices, though it can be hard sometimes to sort the treasure from the trash. Ocassionally this means I will not buy a newly released ebook from a favourite author until it does eventually reach and acceptable price or I can borrow it from a library.
I suspect that geo-restrictions will slowly vanish as content providers are forced to adapt to the market. In the meantime, they are completely ineffective against anyone who chooses to circumvent them, and I suspect that the more unreasonable they become, the more people will choose to do so.
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