I'd love to buy a Kindle and load it up with books, but if I buy a Kindle in Japan it is somehow magically locked to Amazon.co.jp rather than .com, so that's out.
This region-specific Internet can go screw itself, starting with Amazon.
Maybe I misunderstand your problem but I think I can buy books from every amazon store? Or the german amazon store has almost all kindle books that Amazon has, I would imagine it's the same for Japan? Or is your problem that you can't use a japanese kindle with your existing Amazon account?
Yes, I have a US Amazon account, and Kindle purchases on it, which can be read on my computer, iPhone, or iPad through the Kindle app, but if I buy a Kindle reader device in Japan, it will not allow me to access my US account, only an account associated with amazon.co.jp
wait, amazon music purchases are region locked for playback? that's really bizarre. I could see initial purchase, maybe, due to distribution issues/etc. I hope apple isn't the same heh.
Apple has no location-based IP block restrictions in place for any kind of purchase on their store. The billing address limits an account's region; the account's region determines which "store" can be accessed; the store can be accessed from anywhere in the world. I've purchased music, TV, and movies, rented movies, and uploaded my library through the iTunes Match service. No problems, no hiccups with that, ever.
Amazon only follows this model for
MP3 purchases; it allows me to download them.
The cloud-based services, accessing my purchased music through Amazon's servers, accessing streaming video, or even downloading video which I purchased -- these features are all inaccessible from Japan due to the physical location-based IP block check performed before accessing any cloud services.
Boritos have previous suggested spoofing my IP address, but it's easier to just use my Apple account to get the stuff I want, the "internet store" for anything not on iTunes, or just read a (paper) book. I'm just annoyed that Amazon is likely setting the larger stage for non-consumer-facing policies in media distribution.
