I'm gradually starting to read books in Japanese (I've read two so far) and I've decided it's time to read the light novel series one of my favorite anime is based on. I went to Amazon.jp to buy the first volume as an ebook - only to find that I can't purchase it from my country, because of copyright restrictions. This has left me rather stunned (and appalled) since I've never had any problem ordering physical books from the site.

I'm using an online learning tool to aid my reading. That means I need the book in digital form. Truth is I already have a pdf somewhere, but that's just pages from the book scanned and inserted as pictures. In other words, completely useless to me. I also have a text file I downloaded from some torrent site. That would be perfect, except I've had horrible experience using bootleg Japanese ebooks. The files I had were ridden with errors. It seemed as if they used text recognition software that wasn't quite up to the task of handling Kanji. 入口 would be routinely misspelled as 人口 and so on. You get the picture. I spent more time double-checking and correcting mistakes than reading. On top of that, I found out some Japanese person has taken it upon him or herself to modify the Harry Potter series in such way that Hermione ended up with Harry instead of Ron. (Which, if you think about it, is remarkable. As far as I've read the story remained untouched except for the bits containing interactions between the three) This prompted me to bite the bullet, go to Pottermore.com and buy the overpriced ebooks. I wanted to do the same with this series. You already know how that went.

I'm looking for someone who's currently located in Japan (or perhaps there are some other countries where the copyright restrictions don't apply as well?) and would be willing to buy the book for me. I can send you the money via PayPal. If you're worried I won't pay you, I can pay in advance. Plus I only want to buy the first book for starters, and the damn thing's like 350 yen. They only have a Kindle version, you need to be able to get the file to your PC and send it to me. I can take care of any conversions and DRM removal. Rest assured I will not release the book to the public domain in any form, and when it goes to the online tool, it will go as plaintext stripped of any metadata that could potentially lead back to you. If anyone would be willing to help, please reply to this thread or message me. Thank you.

I haven't looked at other ebooks at the Japanese Amazon yet. Is it a common practice to limit the sales of ebooks to Japan only, or is it just this particular title?

You can modify your shipping address to a "fake" address located in Japan. There is a service that does it and as far as I know it is legal to use, but I don't remember the name as I did it a year ago. But I'm sure someone will come up with the name!

What serie is it? You're right about pirated ebooks. Look at the "innocent novels"... they are full of mistakes, for example only in the first chapter of zero no tsukaima vol.1 I've found three mistakes (two wrong kanji and one wrong furigana). The same with norwegian wood, I've seen a lot of か instead of が.

EDIT: I think the site is tenso.com

cophnia61 Wrote:in the first chapter of zero no tsukaima vol.1 I've found three mistakes

Vol 1 is riddled with OCR errors in the batch I've got too, though fortunately vols 2+ are much better.

I've looked at the possibility of providing a fake Japanese address. But the input form contained a mandatory phone number field and from what I understood Amazon will verify that I'm really in Japan by sending a PIN code to the phone and having you enter it on the website. I have a few friends in Japan, I may ask one of them to help me out with that some day.

In any case, my VISA card has been misused, and has been blocked as a result. I'm getting a new card in 8 to 10 business days. But in the mean time, my only option for online payment is PayPal (that or Bitcoin) and Amazon doesn't accept PayPal.

The series in question is the Suzumiya Haruhi series. I find the whole thing ridiculous. I can buy a physical copy of the book from anywhere in the world, but I can't buy a digital copy unless I'm physically in Japan? It's stupid. The internet should be border-less. That's the point of the internet - that it's limitless. At least it was until a bunch of old guys caught wind of it and promptly bucked it up with their country restrictions, censorship and other outdated bullshit.

Is there some sort of profanity filter here that messes up my ***** cursewords?
EDIT: There is! Remarkable!

Green_Airplane Wrote:I've looked at the possibility of providing a fake Japanese address. But the input form contained a mandatory phone number field and from what I understood Amazon will verify that I'm really in Japan by sending a PIN code to the phone and having you enter it on the website. I have a few friends in Japan, I may ask one of them to help me out with that some day.

I think that website does it for you. I'm sure because I did it too at the time and it worked xD

The thing is, this is not about a shipping address. In order to get around the copyright restriction, I need to set my "Country settings" to Japan. This is something that's within my profile page. I'm not sure how Tenso would go about helping me with that.
In any case, Tenso is an international shipping company, and since I'll be buying ebooks, there's no shipping involved, so what's in it for them?
Also, I remember exchanging a couple of emails with Tenso years ago. I wanted to get something shipped from Japan, and I tried (unsuccessfully) to convince them to add my country to the list of countries they ship to. They didn't seem very forthcoming then.

I haven't done it myself, but typically I understand people that buy Japanese amazon ebooks use a separate account and a separate device specifically for Japanese books. It's pretty important to maintain the facade perfectly or they will lock the books out until you can provide some pretty solid proof that you're living in Japan.

It is pretty stupid. I don't know what's going on with Japanese IP but ... yeah. E-books, streaming radio, music PV's on youtube even... there's a lot of barriers to getting access to Japanese content, even if it's normally offered for free, even if you're willing to pay for it the same as people in Japan. Many restrictions can be gotten around simply with a proxy server, but with Amazon a proxy server is just one step of many.

Is there any chance you could help me contact some of those people?

Green_Airplane Wrote:The thing is, this is not about a shipping address. In order to get around the copyright restriction, I need to set my "Country settings" to Japan. This is something that's within my profile page. I'm not sure how Tenso would go about helping me with that.
In any case, Tenso is an international shipping company, and since I'll be buying ebooks, there's no shipping involved, so what's in it for them?
Also, I remember exchanging a couple of emails with Tenso years ago. I wanted to get something shipped from Japan, and I tried (unsuccessfully) to convince them to add my country to the list of countries they ship to. They didn't seem very forthcoming then.

Where it this "country settings" option? I cannot find it in my profile page. When I registered they asked only for my e-mail and password. Then I had to set up a shipping address and I put the "virtual" address Tanso gave to me.
All of this while I was using "SoftEther VPN Client Manager" with a free japanese vpn.

I did this and it worked, and it seems everyone is doing this. See this and the two links rich_f gives in his post.

Do this and you will have no problem.

PS: yes, I know it is a "shipping address" but as you will buy only kindle books they will send nothing on that fake address, you use it only to make Amazon believe the things you buy will be uset within the Japan boundaries.

I see. I'll go through that thread and figure it out. I don't own a Kindle (and never will) I hope that's not a problem. I'll show you the "Country settings" later, I'm on a different machine now and I have the account password saved on the other one. Thanks.

Green_Airplane Wrote:(…). At least it was until a bunch of old guys caught wind of it and promptly bucked it up with their country restrictions, censorship and other outdated bullshit.

If being pissed off by Amazon.jp restrictions on buying books from abroad is sufficient to qualify as a youngster, I am ready to join the club, despite my over six decades on duty ;-)

This is more about old ways of thinking than it is about old age. The concept of national borders is simply outdated in the context of today's technologies and has no place on the internet. By "old guys" I also meant the owners of the old distribution channels - the publishers, TV networks, record labels, distributors. They are getting less and less relevant with their outdated business model, and they have no idea how to adapt. So they do their best and exert their considerable influence to force their old restrictions - and their old way of thinking - on the new media. All that will do is postpone their own demise, while they piss off a bunch of people. I'm not that young myself, but I pretty much grew up on the internet, and as a software guy I understand its principles and its capabilities. And I for one would never dream of restricting certain content based on whether or not someone's device is physically within a certain geographic area. That's just plain stupid.

The only people I can see it hurting is bookstores specializing in selling Japanese books abroad. That's such a niche market and you wouldn't think they'd have any clout at all. I fail to see how it would help the publishers themselves since they should get the same royalties no matter how the book is sold and if it's sold electronically then they're going to sell more than otherwise. Am I missing something? Oh well. BTW there are actually some pretty neat tools for reading scanned books - PDF's on your computer. Like kanjitomo. Not that it isn't better to get a professionally edited electronic version. But it works ok.

Probably exclusive international rights for JP stuff being bought with contracts that prevent JP companies from selling directly to their markets. The reverse happens as well, with Amazon US not selling certain things to people in JP, for example.

So some 'thoughtful' attorney thunk it up and put it in the contract telling his boss how he's protecting their interest etc. As if. I think you're right though.

Green_Airplane Wrote:This is more about old ways of thinking than it is about old age. The concept of national borders is simply outdated in the context of today's technologies and has no place on the internet.

National borders are very relevant in this context. In Japan, grossly violating intellectual property rights (by buying a bunch of e-books, and sharing them online with thousands of people, for free, for instance), will land you in prison. Outside of Japan, you'll get a slap on the wrist at most...in most countries, not even that.

So it's perfectly understandable that Japanese publishers protect their property rights, by only selling to people subject to Japanese law.

As soon as your country decides to start protecting the intellectual property rights of Japanese publishers, I'm sure they'll be happy to ignore those national borders and sell you their products.

I get what you're saying and I agree that intellectual property of the authors should be protected. But as I said, the problem is they're trying to impose restrictions on a system they don't understand. These kinds of restrictions will NEVER stop the pirates. A pirate is someone who knows the system and knows how to get the files. No matter how hard your restrictions are, sooner or later they'll gonna get the data - and it's enough for just one of them to get the data, for there to be a pirated version available for everyone.

You can't stop the signal.

Case in point, I did find two different pirated versions of the book I'm looking to buy. Maybe the txt version was made by OCR, and maybe it was made by somebody taking the official ebook and converting it to txt. It may well have been the latter.
The only people it will stop is people trying to abide by the law and buy the book.

Let me explain what I mean. There's three kinds of people here:
1. The honest guy, who will try to buy the book, and when can't he'll just let it go. He has nothing to do with pirates, and he may not be technical enough to figure out a VPN and all the other steps to work around the restriction.
2. The pirate. This guy will figure out how to get the book and then put it on the net for everyone to share. You can't stop this guy. If he has to set up a VPN to Japan, he'll do it. If he has to convince his friend in Japan to buy the books and send them to him, he'll do it. He may even just buy the books when he himself is in Japan. He's smart enough to make sure the leaked files don't contain anything that can be traced back to him. The only reason he hasn't pirated your stuff is he hasn't heard of you yet, or hasn't gotten around to it yet.
3. A guy like me. Someone who doesn't usually release copyrighted stuff on the internet, but knows how to do it. I originally wanted to just buy the books, read them and be done with it. I'll admit, it wasn't because I'm highly moral or anything, I just had a bad experience with bootleg copies and didn't want to risk going through it again. But now I'm thinking, what do I do with the books once I've got them? Do I release them on the internet, just to show the fuckers up? I'm technical enough to make sure the files can't be traced back to me.

So here's what you're doing by putting up those senseless restrictions:
- You're frustrating guy number 1, and losing profits from him at the same time. Not just the profit from this purchase, but from a lot of future purchases, because you can be sure he'll go and look for other channels. Plus he'll badmouth you wherever he can.
- You are doing diddly-squat to stop guy number 2. If he wants to pirate your stuff, he will. And if he hears people complaining that they can't buy your stuff because of senseless restrictions, he's more likely to do it. By creating restrictions, you're encouraging piracy.
- You are seriously pissing off guy number 3, giving him an incentive to pirate your stuff. Once again, by creating restrictions, you're encouraging piracy.

It all comes down to this: In a perfect world, there would be a way to stop piracy. There would also be no need for piracy. In a perfect world there would be no hair loss and no pet would ever die. But we live in the real world, and you can either have a completely totalitarian internet, devoid of all privacy and freedom of expression, or you have to accept the fact that there's gonna be some piracy. The question is, do you exhibit attitudes and policies that encourage it, or ones that make people inclined to do the right thing instead?

Quote:Case in point, I did find two different pirated versions of the book I'm looking to buy. Maybe the txt version was made by OCR, and maybe it was made by somebody taking the official ebook and converting it to txt. It may well have been the latter.

I want to say just one thing, be careful with those pirated books, most of the time they are OCRed and full of mistakes!

Green_Airplane Wrote:I get what you're saying and I agree that intellectual property of the authors should be protected. But as I said, the problem is they're trying to impose restrictions on a system they don't understand. These kinds of restrictions will NEVER stop the pirates. A pirate is someone who knows the system and knows how to get the files. No matter how hard your restrictions are, sooner or later they'll gonna get the data - and it's enough for just one of them to get the data, for there to be a pirated version available for everyone.

You can't stop the signal.

Case in point, I did find two different pirated versions of the book I'm looking to buy. Maybe the txt version was made by OCR, and maybe it was made by somebody taking the official ebook and converting it to txt. It may well have been the latter.
The only people it will stop is people trying to abide by the law and buy the book.

Let me explain what I mean. There's three kinds of people here:
1. The honest guy, who will try to buy the book, and when can't he'll just let it go. He has nothing to do with pirates, and he may not be technical enough to figure out a VPN and all the other steps to work around the restriction.
2. The pirate. This guy will figure out how to get the book and then put it on the net for everyone to share. You can't stop this guy. If he has to set up a VPN to Japan, he'll do it. If he has to convince his friend in Japan to buy the books and send them to him, he'll do it. He may even just buy the books when he himself is in Japan. He's smart enough to make sure the leaked files don't contain anything that can be traced back to him. The only reason he hasn't pirated your stuff is he hasn't heard of you yet, or hasn't gotten around to it yet.
3. A guy like me. Someone who doesn't usually release copyrighted stuff on the internet, but knows how to do it. I originally wanted to just buy the books, read them and be done with it. I'll admit, it wasn't because I'm highly moral or anything, I just had a bad experience with bootleg copies and didn't want to risk going through it again. But now I'm thinking, what do I do with the books once I've got them? Do I release them on the internet, just to show the fuckers up? I'm technical enough to make sure the files can't be traced back to me.

So here's what you're doing by putting up those senseless restrictions:
- You're frustrating guy number 1, and losing profits from him at the same time. Not just the profit from this purchase, but from a lot of future purchases, because you can be sure he'll go and look for other channels. Plus he'll badmouth you wherever he can.
- You are doing diddly-squat to stop guy number 2. If he wants to pirate your stuff, he will. And if he hears people complaining that they can't buy your stuff because of senseless restrictions, he's more likely to do it. By creating restrictions, you're encouraging piracy.
- You are seriously pissing off guy number 3, giving him an incentive to pirate your stuff. Once again, by creating restrictions, you're encouraging piracy.

It all comes down to this: In a perfect world, there would be a way to stop piracy. There would also be no need for piracy. In a perfect world there would be no hair loss and no pet would ever die. But we live in the real world, and you can either have a completely totalitarian internet, devoid of all privacy and freedom of expression, or you have to accept the fact that there's gonna be some piracy. The question is, do you exhibit attitudes and policies that encourage it, or ones that make people inclined to do the right thing instead?

I detect two arguments in that post: 1. Publishers are too stupid to understand why they're wrong (obvious fallacy, not gonna comment further) and 2. you can't stop piracy, so why try. I'll address number 2:

No law has ever stopped crime. That's not the point. Deterring some of the crime is good enough. Anti-murder laws aren't meant to end murder. They're meant to keep it down. Murder solve rates are less than 50%, even in rich countries. And yet, life is tolerable because of those "ineffective" murder laws.

Without efforts to curb piracy, there would be no publishing industry. Almost no one would pay for something that's readily available for free. With efforts to curb piracy, there's still major damage being done to the publishing industry, but at least the industry exists, and is producing content. Finding what you're looking for, for free, is hard, and most people have no idea where to even start. More efforts would limit the damage even more.

And Japanese publishers not selling abroad probably helps too. It's obviously not true that Japanese businesses are too stupid to run the numbers, and compare lost sales abroad (which would probably be tiny anyway) with the potential damage caused by their whole library popping up on some Russian or Chinese site, in perfect quality, available for everyone in Japan to download for free. Not even Japan can stop people from downloading pirated content for personal use. But they can deter the mass sharing of pirated content, as long as publishers also make an effort to keep it from getting stolen by foreigners.

Green_Airplane Wrote:3. A guy like me. Someone who doesn't usually release copyrighted stuff on the internet, but knows how to do it. I originally wanted to just buy the books, read them and be done with it. I'll admit, it wasn't because I'm highly moral or anything, I just had a bad experience with bootleg copies and didn't want to risk going through it again. But now I'm thinking, what do I do with the books once I've got them? Do I release them on the internet, just to show the fuckers up? I'm technical enough to make sure the files can't be traced back to me.

Go ahead and do it. No one cares. That's not what the policy is aiming to prevent. The policy is aiming to prevent the easy, mass distribution of entire libraries of content. You can't do that. All you can do is steal a few books, and share them with a few dozen people. If you ever get around to it. You probably won't.

Also, most people don't think like that. Especially in Japan. They accept the right of property owners to defend their property, even if it is sometimes inconvenient for customers.

Green_Airplane Wrote:It all comes down to this: In a perfect world, there would be a way to stop piracy. There would also be no need for piracy. In a perfect world there would be no hair loss and no pet would ever die. But we live in the real world, and you can either have a completely totalitarian internet, devoid of all privacy and freedom of expression, or you have to accept the fact that there's gonna be some piracy. The question is, do you exhibit attitudes and policies that encourage it, or ones that make people inclined to do the right thing instead?

That's the same false dichotomy anarchists use. In fact, anarchy and totalitarianism are not the only options. Totalitarianism is the curbing of freedom, not theft. You can have a free Internet that is governed by laws. Anarchy isn't freedom. You need laws to have freedom.

Stansfield123 Wrote:That's the same false dichotomy anarchists use. In fact, anarchy and totalitarianism are not the only options. Totalitarianism is the curbing of freedom, not theft. You can have a free Internet that is governed by laws. Anarchy isn't freedom. You need laws to have freedom.

Good points Stansfield123!

I think anarchy is perfect equilibrium, and not "do what the f**k you want", like steal other people's work. In fact if there is anarchy, the act of stealing a book would break that anarchy. Obviously anarchy, in this acceptation, is more like "peace on earth". But yes, anarchy is not absence of rules or absence of organisation.

Oh boy, where do I start.
Alright, I'll try to address the arguments in your post systematically. I hope you won't take it as ad hominem, if I conclude that the points I've made have gone completely over your head, and I'll therefore assume that you're not from the IT industry. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, it just means I'll have to reiterate some of the points I've made, and try to explain them better. I might sound condescending doing so, I just want you to know that it's not intentional.

BTW, you'll notice I'm only quoting the specific points as I address them. It seams more sensible to me than quoting your entire post. If you feel you've been quoted out of context, feel free to object.

First of all:

Quote:...the potential damage caused by their whole library popping up on some Russian or Chinese site, in perfect quality, available for everyone in Japan to download for free.

What's the fantasy here? That if they allowed people from abroad to buy their ebooks, someone from Russia or China would just buy their entire library and publish it for free? You realize they'd still have to pay for the books in order to do that, right? This is just a geographical restriction, it has nothing to do with it being free versus paid content.
Also, you seem to be laboring under the impression that this restriction somehow prevents people from spreading the books, once they already have them. As I've tried to explain, that's just not how it works. This restriction can only ever hope to prevent someone from obtaining the data, it can't do anything to prevent them from spreading it once they have it.

Quote:All you can do is steal a few books, and share them with a few dozen people.

Once again, that's just not how it works. Once I get hold of an ebook, I can do as good a job of sharing it with the rest of the world as the aforementioned Russian or Chinese sites. Hell, I can even put it directly on those sites.

And, let me restate this, this restriction WILL NOT STOP A PIRATE. It will stop the average Joe from enjoying the book (and, might I add, prompt him to go to the pirates) but it can not, and will not, stop a pirate.
Just consider the following: If you're publishing digital content to a public domain consisting of several millions of people, there's no way you can possibly restrict it to a certain geographical area or prevent it from getting into the hands of certain people. Not in this day and age.
To a skilled pirate this sort of restriction is nothing but a little nuisance. Sure, you can go for more restrictions, tougher anti-piracy protection. Until that one's broken too, and then you go for one that's even tougher, and so on. I've seen first hand where this can lead, and believe me, it usually leaves regular users so pissed off by all the restrictions that they're ready to give up on the product. Yet the pirates have found a way around even the toughest protection - ready to provide a hassle-free alternative to a pissed off customer who has vowed never to spend a dime on your company again.

This brings us to my second supposed fallacy:

Quote:2. you can't stop piracy, so why try

Nowhere in my post have I argued that one shouldn't try to stop piracy. I think it's important to try to reduce piracy. I'm not against anti piracy laws or copyright laws. What I'm arguing is, the way they chose to combat piracy is stupid. It's ineffective. As I've argued over and over again, it won't stop the pirates, it will frustrate consumers and turn non-pirates into pirates. Real world experience has shown us that there are far more efficient ways of dealing with piracy - you have only to look at content distributors that thrive in today's world where all the content is digital and anything digital can be copied endlessly. The way you do it is as follows:
1. You start with a sensible set of laws - and let's face it, the large content providers get to pretty much write the laws.
2. You engage your customer community (if there isn't any you build one) and show them you actually give a crap about them, and not just your profits. And crucially,
3. You provide better service than the pirates

This brings me to my first supposed fallacy, my "obvious fallacy"

Quote:1. Publishers are too stupid to understand why they're wrong

I'm not gonna reread everything I wrote to check if I actually directly called them stupid. I may have. I won't deny I spoke about them in anger - I am angry at them. I'm sure there are many smart people working for these companies, and they've achieved great things. And it is my opinion, that on this particular issue many of them still have their heads up their arses. I realize this new digital age is mighty scary to some folks, but they've had well over a decade to figure it out.

Lastly, let me address the "false dichotomy that anarchists use". I did not mean to imply that the only options here are totalitarianism and anarchy. Nor did I ever argue against the necessity of laws. My point, once again, is technological.

Quote:You can have a free Internet that is governed by laws.

I agree. However, as a software engineer (and believe me, I hate to be the guy that starts his sentences like this) I understand the underlying principles of computer security. Unfortunately, when you really get into the nitty-gritty of the technology, the backdoors, the loopholes, the workarounds, it turns out you can't effectively shut down piracy - not without what would essentially amount to a totalitarian computer system. In terms of the software that would have to be present on your computer, on the web servers, on the routers, you'd be giving the government and the corporations unprecedented control over your computer and thereby your personal information. Anything less, and the pirates would once again find a way. Believe me, I'm as bummed out about it as anyone else.

Here are a few good links explaining why you can't buy certain books in certain countries.

tl;dr: A large complicated legacy system with many players(publishers, distributers, governments, laws...) who can't agree with eachother, and publication rights in different locations owned by different companies.

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/3543...ndle-users
http://www.fancygoods.com.au/tim/2010/04...they-want/
http://www.malindalo.com/2013/07/why-can...s-country/
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/06369200...cationDate

cophnia61 Wrote:

Stansfield123 Wrote:That's the same false dichotomy anarchists use. In fact, anarchy and totalitarianism are not the only options. Totalitarianism is the curbing of freedom, not theft. You can have a free Internet that is governed by laws. Anarchy isn't freedom. You need laws to have freedom.

Good points Stansfield123!

I think anarchy is perfect equilibrium, and not "do what the f**k you want", like steal other people's work. In fact if there is anarchy, the act of stealing a book would break that anarchy. Obviously anarchy, in this acceptation, is more like "peace on earth". But yes, anarchy is not absence of rules or absence of organisation.

Anarchy is the lack of government. As long as you stick to that, anything goes; this means that anarchies could be very peaceful or very violent, but both will be lawless; rules can be created by groups in anarchies, but no one is bound by them.
That's why anarchy is impractical for anything beyond small populations (in real life, at least): everyone has to agree to non-violence and pretty much everything else, and trust everyone else, because that agreement is only in words or mutual understanding, there's no predetermined consequence to breaking the agreement.

RE: copyright / international licensing
It's outdated and doesn't do what it was intended to do. Heck, it hasn't done so for centuries: you know all those (legal) free texts floating around the web? A lot of them wouldn't be free if copyright was, back then, as it is now.

@Stansfield123
You're implying that, by providing digital distributions to foreigners, a company is inviting rampant and uncontrollable piracy... That's just wrong on so many levels. First, it assumes that no domestic customer will share files; second, it assumes that there are no foreign file-sharers in position to purchase these items; third, it assumes that domestic customers will all pirate the product if someone shares the file (I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt by not labeling this '... if a foreigner shares the file'. I know you're smarter than that).
Let's just leave the first two alone, as we all know that absolutes are stupid assumptions in these situations.
As I'm not an economist, I have to speak of this through comparison.
The people who think that piracy is theft (it's not, nothing is lost), as opposed to a market indicator will all go on about falling CD sales since the internet and audio compression became popular, so why do people spend so much money on iTunes? It's because iTunes provides better distribution (on par or better than pirating) and price (because physical media costs way more than digital distribution). If piracy were really crippling the music industry, why is it that iTunes isn't in the toilet by now? (And I won't claim this as truth, as I don't have the numbers, but people seem to listen to a lot more music than they used to.) Because DRM on music is just a formality, you can find almost anything online; so with such an apparently rampant piracy problem (if you look at the amount of content that can be found online), why aren't things worse?
Same with TV and movies; why do people pay for Netflix, Hulu, etc. (and, a lot of the time, still have cable/satellite, if only because it basically came with their internet) when so many things are available online?

It's simple, the reason people still pay for things is because they want to. There are some people who won't buy anything that they can find online (I know a lot of people do this for textbooks; again, market indicator), but the vast majority of consumers will buy things if its priced well and convenient to purchase. At least for now, most things that are pirated would be quite cheap (sans textbooks and software) through digital distribution, so there isn't really incentive to pirate rather than purchase.

I suggest reading some reputable papers on piracy, if you ever get the time (be careful though, there are a lot of heavily biased papers where (often sponsored by publishing groups or one of the MAFIAA), even if they take the data properly, they just throw it out the window at the end and say that piracy is 100% bad and evil and you should be executed and go to hell if you do it). I read a couple that actually suggested that natural levels of piracy were a neutral, if not positive influence on sales (one was even biased against it, but the writers didn't ignore their data), because of the people that purchased the same or other works after pirating one by the same creator (suggesting that the 'I only pirate for a trial run' people aren't all making it up). Unfortunately, I'm too lazy to go find any of them to link here (I should really start bookmarking those...)
Anyway, I'm not suggesting that piracy should be a completely acceptable practice, but extreme attempts to stop it only hurt legal consumers.

But yeah, as yogert909 said, it's really just a problem with legacy systems being incompatible with modern consumers and business models.

Japanese publishers (and Amazon, and etc.) have no problem selling to foreigners, as long as they have a Japanese IP (and a Japanese address, not sure) logged in their system with the purchase.
I guess that's a "cover my ass" evidence that it will protect them if a company that holds the rights for France (for example) complains that they are selling to someone in France.
"Oh, but the customer had a Japanese IP, how would we know he was not in Japan?".