Right, we are egregiously gouged. We even pay the same for a book printed down the road, as one flown in from New York.
The fact remains for all the legal jargon, publishing contracts, author protectionism, etc. the general consumer does not care, not should they. If defenders of such have to write an 8 page justification of it, even worse.
There was one of the linked publishing industry articles saying they put out way too many books - so if half the authors/books went away, who'd notice? Barring in the case it being your favorite, etc.
The option that has multinationals sueing each other into oblivion sounds like fun, though.
Any regional sales discrimination and price gouging guarantees more file sharing, of course. In fact, people will go out of their way to do it more, because they are annoyed.
Books are harder to get for free than movies and tv and cost a lot more than comics and are sold in pathetic numbers in comparison, and there are astronomical numbers of different titles. So probably unlikely to see organised 0-day (or week, or month, more realistically) ripping groups in the same manner, but it will grow.
If you do have to fake your address, and jump through hoops to get stuff, it does make a certain risk management economic sense to get yourself a distributed-world backup of your book that cannot be taken away by the shutting down of access, servers, or changing conditions in the case of the crappy DRM infested versions, at least.