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ELI5: Why are content copyrighted across regions?

GrooseIsLoose

Slickest pompadour in town
ZD Legend
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Aug 16, 2019
Location
Skyloft
I avoided asking this question for a long time for the fear of coming across as stupid. I'm fairly informed about copyright. Like I know that if a celebrity reports a copyrighted picture of themselves they can be sewed by the photographer.

But I don't understand why youtube and Netflix do that. More views=more profit right?
How does making a video or music not available on a region benefit them.
 

Stitch

AKA Patrick
Joined
Aug 13, 2013
Basically the rights to music, movies, and other media don't belong to the same right's holder in each country. For something like Netflix they may have permission from Universal to show a movie in the US, but in the rest of the world the rights to that movie are held by Warner Bros or some other company. It is essentially the same for music and tv shows, but within their given industries. If they can't get permission from the rights holder in a country, they are unable to present that media there legally.
 

TheGreatCthulhu

Composer of the Night.
Joined
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United States of America
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Very much a dude.
First of all, "sewed" refers to the act of using thread to stitch garments back together. The term you're looking for when bringing legal action against somebody is, "sued."

And to make this even more simple, let's make this into a juice stand scenario.

Let's say your juice stand wants to sell other kinds of juices alongside your own blends and juices you've made. Well, let's just say that your neighbor the next street over makes the juice you want to sell at your stand. So you saunter on over and ask him that if you share some of the profits with him, you can then sell his juice at your stand and make a killing.

The juice stand in this situation are what streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, and such are. They're just stands and libraries that showcase content that they and the owner of the rights to that content agreed to show through some sort of mutually beneficial deal.

But your neighbor, the person making juice, is firmly within his rights to say no, and offer his own juice stand to sell his own juice on his own street, hence why there's various streaming services, and sometimes you can't get certain products in certain countries, it isn't just limited to content like TV, movies, or music, but anything really.

That's one reason.

The other reason is this thing called laws, and some governments are more authoritarian than others, and may just block access to certain content, even if there's rights to showcase that content there. Not only that, but different countries have different copyright laws, so that's another reason.

Basically, @Stitch got this one right. It comes down to who holds the rights to showcase the content, and governments and laws. If you ever needed a more compelling reason to use a VPN, I'm not sure you'd find a better reason.
 
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