I like Dune. I like it a lot. So being the happy owner of a BeBook Mini, I decided to buy the 40th anniversary edition from eBooks.com. Unlucky me:
This book is only available to customers in the following countries: United States.
The same goes with other e-bookstores too. I am sure that there exists a perfectly standing reason in some legal universe that does not allow me to buy an eBook version of Dune because I live in Greece, while at the same time I can go to Eleftheroudakis, or Politia and buy the english version in paperback!
To make it even funnier, I can buy a Greek translation of Dune from e-bookshop.gr (which is what I did in the end). So if I live in Greece and cannot read the native language, I cannot buy the eBook version!
It seems to me that only O’Reilly, Apress and Manning “get” it about eBooks. The rest seem to try and reproduce their current business model in a new paperless medium. We’ve got news for you: An eBook is not a book. It is now time to understand that the book is the content and you’ve been selling the medium.
Managing organized complexity 
On other news: ebook piracy outside the US is rampant. Sometimes piracy can be the sole source for a cultural product. Personally although I have papeback editions of all six Frank Herbert’s books on Dune but a few times whille I was reading them i wished i had an ebook edition on my devices.
I believe O’Reilly has one of the best policies in handling ebooks but on the other hand O’Reilly is a “tech-savvy” publishing house.
It’s plain idiotic if you ask me. Cosmix had an issue with Amazon’s new toy. I just recalled the post(s) because I’ve received the weekly promotional email from Amazon citing: “Our offers for Greece this week” and below there’s a fine ad “Buy the new Kindle for only 109 BGP!”.
I thought, I couldn’t buy it, even if I wanted too! And why buy the kindle if I can’t buy the ebooks I want too?
I agree it makes absolutely no sense to me to shut out potential customers. The legal stuff is over my head but this site has some articles that might shed some light on how it all works http://ebookdistribution.org. I still think it’s stupid.