It's not that easy to work away from. Which is why Netflix has been paying more to create or co-create content (most Netflix content isn't world-wide exclusive it seems).
It's not that easy to work away from. Which is why Netflix has been paying more to create or co-create content (most Netflix content isn't world-wide exclusive it seems).
Which is another reason not to use regional licensing going forward, and pass laws to disfavor it in general. It increases transaction costs -- then when Netflix or any of your hundred other buyers wants global rights to a particular film, they have to negotiate with a hundred regional distributors instead of just the original creator. The transaction costs go from "N" to "N times M" where N and M are both large. And transaction costs make otherwise profitable transactions either less profitable or not happen at all.
I'm curious what your proposed legislation would be. Just outlaw exclusive licensing? Would you prohibit vertical integration between content producers and distributors or just force vertically integrated companies to license content to competing distributors?
How about a distributor that has an inherent market advantage and so can bid higher on the rights than other distributors? Would that be allowed? Or would you require producers to charge some lowest common denominator fee so that you can't create releases that are effectively exclusive?
I just can't imagine how you would ever effectively police this without taking away a lot of free market rights from participants.
BTW, just so it's clear, I fully support the current EU Digital Single Market rules that try to enforce the fact that you should be allowed to watch your content while you are traveling. I think that's much easier on all sides of the equation because you're not forcing anyone to make additional deals that they don't want to make (i.e. distributing content to other companies when they want it to be exclusive). I just think it's a big step from that to actually legislating away exclusive distribution deals.
A big thing would be to just discontinue legislative support for it. Get rid of any law preventing third parties from circumventing region locks, so that major companies can overtly thwart them.
Then you can get a "tell Netflix I'm in..." selector from your ISP or bank and the problem gets solved by the market itself.