Is it really copyright law, or is it business-driven content deals?

Content publishers make separate deals with distributors (cable & satellite) along their service-area borders, and can therefore sell the same content multiple times over to different regions, most likely charging pricing based on income levels and audience size, etc.. And no doubt a lot of these deals are exclusive, or at the very least timed exclusives..

I know this isn't news to anyone, but I feel like this whole "sell the same thing over and over" must have a much bigger impact on the very slow internationalization of media, rather than any kind of legal hurdles.

Ostensibly, this market fragmentation was forced by legislative fragmentation. However, excuses are wearing thin: the EU market, for example, is now unique, if distributors actually wanted it to be. But they don't. Because distributors are the fat middlemen without a real future in the digital economy, so they'll try to squeeze every last drop of cash before they're forced out, exploiting every monopoly and every loophole they can. It's up to productions and audiences to bypass them as much as they can.

That's my point..

Publishers want the status quo because they make multiples of licensing income on the same content, and established distributors want the status quo because they fend off competition (and lock in their customers) from new global competitors who have better business models.

I can see why content producers may want these new deals, to get better control, but don't count on anyone else in the gravy train media chain to do anything other than fight new models tooth and nail until the bitter end.

I'm not sure that that's really the issue. The music industry has solved all those problems long ago - I can buy a lossless version of practically any album, free of DRM and knowing that those files will be mine and forever playable.

Here in europe, and I'm assuming the US as well, there's no way to buy and own a movie or TV show in a similar way. It's either DRM or physical media, usually accompanied by long delays before the release reaches europe. Or if available on Amazon Video the film often won't be available in its original language and instead only offer german (for me). Not sure how iTunes or Google handle that but in a nutshell: It's a mess and it has led me to lose interest in film and movies in recent years since a lot of the releases I've been interested in either weren't available or put up barriers left and right.

I haven't found lossless music to be easy to come by legally, am I missing some large site? Amazon for instance only sells MP3s.

Amazon and iTunes are after the big crowd and cater to a an audience where lossless audio probably isn't the key feature.

I buy everything in lossless format and rarely have to look very hard - the few times I had to it turned out to be a vinyl or CD-only release, which wasn't available lossy either. I'm into rather obscure stuff, which may actually help here - I'm not sure but could imagine that it's harder to get lossless audio for the top 40.

Well, here are the stores I use: - Bleep - Boomkat - Qobuz (most iTunes-like with a big selection across all genres, including classic and jazz) - Bandcamp - HDTracks (beware, snake oil! There's no need to go above CD quality in my opinion) - Label / artists stores (yes, many labels or artists sell their music directly without middlemen and in a wider range of formats) - last resort: what.cd or buy the CD and rip it yourself

Tidal sells FLAC, they charge you for it but it's there. I think they're around 30m tracks now.

"If the international community could at least settle for an standard approach to digital distribution over the internet, the world would be a happier place for consumers"

"The international community" does get together and try to hammer out frameworks of copyright and tariffs which harmonize regulation globally. That's where large chunks of things like the TPP and the TTIP come from, and all the internet-melting complaints about the harmonization of copyright laws and the ability of american corporations to enforce copyright laws on australians and the like. But that's what you're asking for - 'why can't everyone just get together and sort out international copyright law so the media industry can come out of the 90s.' They're trying, but you won't like it when they do.

That's actually, in my opinion, pretty much the only reason why Netflix doesn't offer offline viewing, and other stuff. Copyright laws, and media companies, are dinosaurs.

Isn't that one of the points of TPP, so hated by HN?