I was surfing for a piece of legitimate software, found what I wanted on a US site - but the site boldly announced "Due to US Govt regulations, this product is not for sale outside the US, Alaska, and Hawaii.
It was encryption software. So maybe the US govt in its wisdom thinks 'we don't want any of them pesky terrorists getting hold of this, so we'll just allow it to be sold to the 300,000,000 people we know'
