[guard-of-terra]

I bet they aren't officially recognized by USA either, you can still buy Coca-Cola there.

Seriously, I come to think IT products are inferior to physical products in the terms of being able to distribute and make them available regardless of politics.

[kc0bfv]

I suspect citizens of Iran, North Korea, China and the old USSR would disagree with that last sentiment.

Ooh! And the US (Cuban cigars).

[guard-of-terra]

Do you think there are no iPhones in Iran or North Korea? Hint: there are.

Even in USSR people managed to smuggle enough British LPs and Japanese tape recorders to kickstart a Rock movement. It's not that hard.

Compare this to major IT services (Amazon, iTunes, movie streaming) not available in quite a few otherwise rich and democratic, albeit small, countries; or even only available in a selected few of countries.

[kc0bfv]

Well, I guess my point was that there are a lot of physical goods that US companies may not sell to these countries due to sanctions - political reasons. Certainly folks circumvent these measures. People also circumvent regional restrictions on Internet services with VPNs. I'm sure this company doesn't want to smuggle its service in. I have no idea why the service isn't available in some specific area, but I suspect "not being recognized by the EU" isn't the primary reason. Though that may make implementation more difficult in an area.

My impression has been that companies have prevented each other from distributing to some of those rich and democratic small countries. Through region specific licensing of their media they've limited distribution. I don't think those are political measures, although certainly in other cases companies have used political means to achieve their goals.