[jacques_chester]

Protection is not the problem. The problem is that each jurisdiction is a different sales market for copyright holders. While selling into Canada, Australia etc the sellers may have given over a total copyright license, or there might be terms trying to prevent "leakage" from the home market and so on.

For example, as an Australian, I used to be able to watch whole episodes of Stewart & Colbert via the website. Then one of the local cable companies got the Australian rights to those shows and blam, no more easily-watched episodes for me.

[jarek]

And in a lot of cases it simply doesn't make sense to deal with a whole new regulatory system for a 10% bump in potential market size.

[thechangelog]

Not sure why you got downvotes for this. This is exactly my take, too. The regulatory hurdles for online producers are significant and Canada is a small market relative to the United States.

As my previous comment indicated I know the hurt of learning about a product and finding out it's unavailable here. However, I understand the economics at work and feel that–while they're frustrating–they're totally understandable.