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...
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...