Freedom you cannot read about while outside the UK

I just read about Bernadette McDonald's famed book 'Freedom Climbers' in my weekly German paper 'Die Zeit'. It sounded interesting, and I thought I should get it and read it. As the German-Language hardcover edition published in Switzerland was rather costly, and my bookshelf never has enough space for yet another 400-page volume, I started to look for an e-book edition.
I found the Kindle offer fast, however for the the american market. I prefer to buy thge book where the taxes stay in Europe, and in addition I don't have a kindle available.
Some more search engine work brought me to a British e-book site called Waterstones offering an e-book version of 'Freedom Climbers' at 8 GPB. Just what I was looking for!


So I clicked to buy while sitting at my computer in Norway, and this is what I got: a pop-up window telling me that due to 'technical restrictions', the book will only be sold to people in the UK and Ireland:

'We regret that due to the technical limitations of our site, we are unable to sell eBooks to customers outside of the UK and Ireland.   For further details on this, please consult  eBook Territorial Restictions help page. '   

So how did they know I'm not inside the UK? Must have been the IP address. Their privacy policy doesn't state geographic discrimination as one of their purposes of IP address processing, though. I sense a violation of my European privacy rights, however that is not in focus here, since lying in web shop privacy policies is quite normal, even on Waterstones.com . ('We use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server and to administer our website. Your IP address is also used to help identify you and your details on our database.')

So I'm in the wrong part of Europe, on the wrong side of a national border, to buy the e-book. How ironic. Freedom to read i sonly for those who live in the UK, or read on paper.
There isn't a Norwegian issue published that needs protection.

So here go 8 GBP I actually had planned to spend on the book. What next? Google for a pirated PDF? Wait for a 1$-charity-shop copy to turn up? Or try to use one of those IP proxies to turn up with a British IP address and a british friend's credit card number?

Life in borderless Europe requires just a little bit of extra effort to enjoy the European freedoms. Or submission to the rules and jurisdictions of American e-book monopolists.