If your company is American why should you care if one of your customers is currently living in some other country? Your company should make sure it's doing the right thing according to American laws and that customer should understand that his local laws may be different and that's beyond the company's control.
Porn companies do not block access for people in Iran do they? Why not? What's the difference?
Because the company's giving access are not the companies that own the copyright. You are correct, if EMI or Fox or whatever decided that they'd stream their stuff to whoever in the world, they would be perfectly in the good.
But the companies streaming do not own the copyright. They must get permission from EMI or Fox or whoever to do so. And the owners feel that it is in their best interest to approach each geographic/legal region separately, to squeeze as much money out of the distributor as possible (that's their job in this context). From the perspective of the distributor, different legal jurisdictions are a problem because their contracts/agreements with IP owners are tied to legal jurisdictions. They cannot get around that. For IP owners, each new market (with its legal jurisdiction) is another chance to get a better deal.
I'd expect part of the problem is that these are multi-national companies. Even if the box is in America, the office overseas could be targeted for legal action.
Comments
If your company is American why should you care if one of your customers is currently living in some other country? Your company should make sure it's doing the right thing according to American laws and that customer should understand that his local laws may be different and that's beyond the company's control.
Porn companies do not block access for people in Iran do they? Why not? What's the difference?
Because the company's giving access are not the companies that own the copyright. You are correct, if EMI or Fox or whatever decided that they'd stream their stuff to whoever in the world, they would be perfectly in the good.
But the companies streaming do not own the copyright. They must get permission from EMI or Fox or whoever to do so. And the owners feel that it is in their best interest to approach each geographic/legal region separately, to squeeze as much money out of the distributor as possible (that's their job in this context). From the perspective of the distributor, different legal jurisdictions are a problem because their contracts/agreements with IP owners are tied to legal jurisdictions. They cannot get around that. For IP owners, each new market (with its legal jurisdiction) is another chance to get a better deal.
I'd expect part of the problem is that these are multi-national companies. Even if the box is in America, the office overseas could be targeted for legal action.