>It does seem to be becoming the norm for AI companies to licence premium content in America, judging by the deals they're making. It doesn't seem to be done by the international distillers.

International distillers doesn't use that premium content, so they don't pay for it. They do pay for their access to the models they are distilling. Thus providing the revenue stream to those models. Thus those models make profit off the content they used for training. The content they mostly have't paid for.

>It's a cost that American open models will seem to have to pay but not international.

It goes both ways - American companies and their business are protected by American laws and have access to the market protected by those laws, etc.