The Toronto Star on why Canadians are locked out of new devices and streaming programming. The article makes it clear it isn't copyright law, but rather licensing issues and market costs that are primarily to blame.
Locked Out
November 26, 2007
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byMichael Geist

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Michael Geist
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As a hard-core Padnora fan, I am surpised that our copyright collectives cannot be used to arrange licensing for this content. Why is this not possible?
becouse the American’s are driving this not the collectives. The Americans are more interested in making sure the $$ makes it to the Americans (and strangly enough, other multinational corporations) than to he artists and collectives.
Licensing
I’ve always believed they block access to streaming tv shows to save the international affiliates from losing money. America usually airs the shows first, it takes months (sometimes years) for the shows to make it to UK or Australia. International affiliates would be wasting money purchasing the license fees if everyone as already seen the shows.
So why then can’t other countries air the tv shows in a timely manner shortly after the US or even simultaneously? In an age of modern high speed file transfers, this is the way it will have to be done, otherwise people definitely will turn to downloading for free. This is the way it’s happening already, so the foreign carriers will only help themselves by broadcasting popular American/Canadian/British programs more quickly.