Similar story with Japan and Western movies.

Way back before decent internet and simple movie piracy methods, movies would take half a year or more to arrive in Japan. When people here (I think it started with university students) got access to high speed internet, they would download, watch and distribute the movies from cams, screeners, or places that already had them on DVD.

Movie people realized how much money they’d lose if people who wanted to see something had the option to watch it free and earlier, so they finally started bringing (most) movies here faster. There’s weird exceptions every now and then (recently Bond and Oppenheimer), but piracy improved things by a lot here.