"To be honest, my experience was very frustrating. I live in the UK and, since Knit Picks doesn't ship overseas, I was interested in their pattern downloads. The problem is that I had to fill in shipping information before the order would go through, even though no shipping was involved. I also had to make up an address since I don't live in the US or Canada.
It seems so counter intuitive that any business would allow themselves to be cut off from a substantially large market for downloadable products like this all because of a technical hitch in their online form. The patterns are advertised on Ravelry (very much an international forum) but perhaps they should come with a warning that says "the pattern can be downloaded from our website but may not work unless you have a dummy North American shipping address ready with your order"."