I think having exclusive distribution rights within geographies is one such usecase for geofencing. This is why Netflix et al may have content available in some zones but not others.
There are all kinds of different legal rights owing to differences in copyright law, contract law, court cases, the medium in question, etc. such that even if one rights holder gave out worldwide distribution rights, inevitably some local difference will require geofencing.
Example: a famous {musician, artist, author, etc.} dies. His heirs dispute who owns the rights to his work.
Courts in Country A give Heir A exclusive rights, but Country B gives Heir B those same rights. Other countries give both of them part ownership.
Worse, a backup drummer / ghostwriter / etc. gets some rights by law in Country C due to a quirk in their local laws.
Now a hypothetical Netflix has to negotiate with different parties in different countries.
This is a mess all on its own.
Add on decades of trading around rights on a per-country basis (or even per time period, per medium, etc.) as part of deals, and it's intractable.
At one point I worked on software to record this kind of thing. It certainly was eye opening, to say the least. Needing to capture legal disputes was an important feature...
The Internet is too global/ubiquitous (except in evil shitty countries like North Korea, China) to make dividing content availability by region realistic in the long run.
Given the amount of money and effort going into these constraints today, one must concede that simply isn't true. There will always be an effort to constrain distribution of media because that is how the moguls keep rich.
Example: a famous {musician, artist, author, etc.} dies. His heirs dispute who owns the rights to his work.
Courts in Country A give Heir A exclusive rights, but Country B gives Heir B those same rights. Other countries give both of them part ownership.
Worse, a backup drummer / ghostwriter / etc. gets some rights by law in Country C due to a quirk in their local laws.
Now a hypothetical Netflix has to negotiate with different parties in different countries.
This is a mess all on its own.
Add on decades of trading around rights on a per-country basis (or even per time period, per medium, etc.) as part of deals, and it's intractable.
At one point I worked on software to record this kind of thing. It certainly was eye opening, to say the least. Needing to capture legal disputes was an important feature...