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> The Internet was conceived as a network of independent nodes, all interconnected. What I said looks a lot more like what the Internet was intended to be than YouTube does.

I don't dispute that, and it's not as much of an issue as long as they are in fact interconnected nodes, but the direction we're heading is that more and more countries are exploring China's and North Korea's model where they have their own sovereign internet. Russia, Iran, Myanmar have all taken concrete steps in the past 2-3 years, and plenty of other countries would do more if they had the ability to do so.

Like it or not, there is actually a notion of "too big to block." Most countries are not willing to block, say, all of Cloudflare's IP ranges, or all of Google or YouTube.

> Perhaps. You might also ask yourself why they are region-locked. I believe it will come down to advertisement, at least to a non-negligible amount.

In my experience, most region locks are based on either licensing deals or government regulations. That seems to be the case for BBC content:

"Programmes cannot be streamed outside the UK, even on holiday. This is because of rights agreements."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/help/questions/playback-issues...

Sure, some licensing deals are made on the basis of "who gets the advertising revenue", but not all of them (or probably most, for that matter).

> In any case, I'm not saying multi-language or multi-country websites and services would be prohibited from existing, only that the likes of YouTube would probably not be as profitable and may cease to exist.

Yep, I totally agree. As I said, "Take away the ad money, and I can't imagine that the remaining subscription revenue comes anywhere close to paying for the infrastructure." I'm not asserting that multi-country websites would be prohibited, but rather that if you push ownership onto governments, they'll prioritize their residents over any other users, and I wouldn't be surprised if said governments institute region locks (e.g. to limit serving costs).




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