Lately, I have the impression we're going in the opposite direction. Examples? I used to buy music from the 7digital online store in the UK (I live in Belgium). I have only last week had a mail from them to tell me that their store is now for UK customers only. Then there's the BBC and Sky with their media-players, eg. iPlayer... Also country-specific. There's the iTunes-stores, again per country. And instead of getting better, it's getting worse.

While some online resellers seem to have no problem supplying other countries, like Amazon.co.uk, for others it doesn't seem possible.

My guess? In Europe, it's never going to happen. Too many conflicting interests, licensing problems, regulations on local markets, protectionism, etc... The EC is anyway only for the rich to take advantage of us all. The whole 'open borders' and free circulation of goods and services between countries is a joke. The EC doesn't even manage to have the same VAT percentage throughout the union. But then, it was never intended to work for joe average, only for him to be taken advantage of.

The EC is a total joke, and not a very funny one at that.