I'm a bit puzzled why Amazon.com will only allow their MP3 files to be downloaded by people in the USA. Other items can be bought off them by people around the world. MP3s being digital should make them even more accessable. Can anyone shed any light on why Amazon.com have this policy?

This is not the fault of Amazon. Like Hollywood and other content providers, the music industry has based its business model on territories. So the american labels can give to Amazon (US) only rights for the sale of mp3s in the USA.

There will be british and other european mp3-services from Amazon soon.

And here it gets interesting. In the EU everyone has the right to buy in an other country: The current practice of iTunes to exclude non-residents from its shops, is (in my opinion) illegal.

We often talk of illegal downloads on here, but the amount of physical bootlegs I spied on the continent is quite shocking.

The Amazon MP3 thing is , I agree, confusing to most people, but we also had a situation here recently, in which some of our new releases were only put in the ITunes USA shop by an oversight (them not us) which I picked up on myself.
This was not terrifically helpful when the acts main sales target was central London!

Also,whilst we, like most others at the moment I`m sure, have pretty much scrapped the " release" date and opted for a "launch" date instead, I would actually kind of like it back, so we know where we are, or maybe just a little notification, which I am sure the majors get.