Out of curiosity, can anyone who is familiar with international regulations answer the following?

Is it possible that the reason we have this convoluted system is that we're essentially purchasing a service from another country? From what I've read in this thread so far, Japanese players aren't required to jump through these hoops (though there seems to be some dispute about this); however, NA players are essentially paying for a service based entirely in a separate country. Even if Japanese players do have to buy crysta, they would still have one less system to traverse than us.