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I live in Norway, and I've always ordered books from Amazon.com with my Norwegian address and credit card. I bought my Kindle the same way and have been buying Kindle e-books without any problems. Thus it appears that Amazon.com is fully willing and able to handle Norwegian customers.

> Please Amazon - please move to one global store where any credit card from any country can purchase any edition of any book.

Not gonna happen without a huge change in international copyright law, probably only possible if the Pirate Party gets constitution-changing majority in all of the key countries at the same time :)

Currently, for the most books there is no such thing as the right to publish a book globally, the existing deals are limited to geographic regions.

PhantomLobe replied to this comment:

Wat? I've bought in .com, .ca, .co.uk, .fr and .es with (both) France and Spain based credit cards with no problems whatsoever.

PhantomLobe, you were hellbanned* for making a comment that didn't fit the the community guidelines:

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Looking at your comment history, you don't seem to be a spammer or a troll, I think it is more that your second comment didn't fit the guidelines and because you didn't have enough karma your account went under water, never to be seen again.

I don't know if it was by a mod, or by a robot, but to keep commenting with our PhantomLobe account is an effort in futility and a waste of your time.

I recommend that you review the guidelines doc above and avoid making comments that may be seen as not adding to the discussion. Also, start spelling words correctly. Wot is not a word and won't win you friends here.

On a related note: I wish HN would would stop hellbanning users for making comments that are not constructive. That's what downvotes are for! I have been seeing far too many people wasting so much time because they don't know they are hellbanned. Hellbanning should be reserved to obvious trolls and spammers, not people getting used to the standards of these discussions.

*http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or-h...

Hear, hear. I've been watching for hell-banned users for a few weeks now and from a random sample, some of the bannings are a little harsh.

Maybe there should be a stage before hell-banning?

Maybe HN should reveal who the hell banners are?

I think it's the computers. Most of the ghosts I see weren't trolls, just young accounts going far enough against the grain to get downvotes. If it's humans doing it, they are absurdly harsh.

That certainly fits the bill for PhantomLobe. Her/his second comment wasn't flamebait or spam, more just an slang laden "me too" style comment. With no karma the account submerged and now PhantomLobe is commenting into the ether with no one listening. I just can't stand to see people was their time like that (unless they are trolls/spammers).

How do you see them? I thought a hellbanned user couldn't be seen by anyone?

Set [showdead] to on in your preferences.

Why would Amazon.co.uk run "europe"? The europeans outside UK, FR or DE are forced to buy the international kindle from the US.

I assume for tax and logistics reasons. A search for "Amazon Europe" delivers an http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/gateway-eu. I'm making assumptions after that.

all international kindles are shipped from the US. ebooks must be bought from US too. the UK ebooks rights are ONLY for the UK, same with FR and DE. the US store handles american and international rights. other markets not quite big enough yet.

if you're thinking about physical books, that's wrong too. a book sold in both the US and UK shop will usually have a different publisher, so which one you get depends on where you ordered it, not where you live.

Seconded. I have a Kindle, I'm in Ireland. I have to use Amazon.com, not Amazon.co.uk. Amazon don't let you choose (unless you were to do fradulent things like use a fake address / credit card with other address etc.)

> Please Amazon - please move to one global store

Aren't they stuck by territorial rights deals? It's weird that books have region lock out.

In my experience the Kindle store is typically only available at Amazon.com when buying from most other countries.

For instance in South Africa while I can buy physical items from both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, if I try to buy anything from the Kindle store on Amazon.co.uk I get told to go to Amazon.com instead.

And it's more complicated than just which store you use. I'm an Australian and I have to use the amazon.com store. But even though I use that store, I can't buy "active content"/applications, which AFAIK is limited to US customers only.

At least there's the book depository for paper books!

I discovered when I was in China that Amazon will not sell music to you there (interestingly, iTunes will). I don't remember whether or not I had the same problem with ebooks. However, solving the problem was as simple as visiting them from a US-based IP address. (Granted, my credit card was based in the US, so that's a hurdle I cleared implicitly.)