I'm in Hong Kong a lot of books are "not available in my region"..I need to go through a US proxy, with a fake US amazon account to buy most books on the store. I buy a gift card with my normal account, and redeem it with the US account so I have money.
Remember those infographs that show watching a movie from a bought DVD (20 steps) vs pirating it (1 step)? The Kindle isn't as bad, but it ain't great either.
Funny. I personally think one main advantages of the kindle is easy access (at comparably cheap prices) to the US book market from outside of the USA or Canada.