Sarah Hendrica Bickerton, writing for AppFactor:
Netflix New Zealand can’t broadcast House of Cards. That’s right, they can’t broadcast their OWN SHOW. The reason for this is that they had previously licensed distribution rights to one of the broadcast TV networks here. So because this network effectively owns it, they control how it is distributed. This gets to the core of the problem regarding international distribution rights.
International media companies will bid and win the option to show US television shows internationally. But, due to the way international media law works, that doesn’t guarantee you’ll be able to see it. If a multi-jurisdiction company owns the rights, but decides not to distribute it in your area, another company can’t show it, because legally the first company owns the rights for your area.
Yet another reason why we can’t have nice things.
We aren’t even a “we.”
When I visit Canada from the U.S. my iPad essentially stops working. Not talking about the data plan failing — I can buy a SIM to fix that. My browser bookmarks almost all stop working and redirect to Canadian sites that I have no interest in, and in many cases you simply can’t get to the corresponding U.S. site, or if you can, some features won’t work. If you try to use the Canadian sites, features also often don’t work because I do not have a Canadian address or credit card and so on. Almost all my TV and movie apps fail completely to show any video. Netflix is the exception, but even there, it shows a completely different lineup of movies.
The redirections are what really bugs me because at any one time, 3% of the people in Canada are visiting U.S. Americans. It is sort of odd to lose all access to U.S. news especially.
The “Internet” is a myth. What we have now is country-nets and cableTV-nets and app-nets and phone-nets.
Yes. Murdoch’s empire owns rights to most international content down here. I suspect this is also why we NZers still cannot purchase TV Shows through iTunes.
I’ve been a Netflix US subscriber for almost two years now. No plans to change to the NZ one unless some crazy law comes into play.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/74102053/netflix-tax-why-consumers-should-be-breathing-a-sigh-of-relief