"Piracy" has very little actual meaning, it's just a negative metaphor. Smuggling things across the border that you aren't meant to have works better with the metaphor than making copies for personal use.

The only reason I can think of why region locks were even a thing is that there was probably a price difference for DVDs depending on region - $15 in the one country, $5 for the same movie elsewhere.

Nah, it really was all about movie distribution rights, and the completely bonkers web of agreements surrounding them. Since there used to be a desire to re-use 35mm film, countries would stagger cinema releases. So "6 months after end of cinema release" is different dates in different places. And there's also music rights which make the process even worse. A big problem is TV series re-releases which couldn't or didn't license the original music, so it's been substituted with something else.

Much of the time for small films the distributors wouldn't bother, so it was region 1 or nothing - or buy a hackable player.

I feel like you're confusing movie theatres with DVDs. DVD regions were _all_ about market segmentation and affordability as opposed to release dates.

It was very much about price differences. Here in Australia we'd pay $30+ for a music CD around the year 2000. We always got shafted on regional pricing. The companies would use the "distributor" excuse but it didn't explain why our prices were so crazy.

EDIT: To clarify, the "local distributors" were a method to optimise local price points.

Like Dawson's Creek on Netflix.... totally different theme song.

There are a few TV series where music played a significant role that, on DVD, much of that has been stripped out because of music rights. You basically can't get the shows as aired. Norther Exposure, and (I've been told) WKRP in Cincinnati come to mind.

My favorite butchering of a show due to external license rights is Beavis and Butthead. My guess is that during their original run on MTV, MTV possessed the rights to air the videos, and the show never acquired those rights. Given the sheer number of videos the series must have gone through, I don't hold out much hope for ever having a complete set, short of piracy.

Hilariously, or sadly, depending on your point of view, box sets of the series say things like "Complete Episodes!" which is technically true, if you consider the episode to be only the non-video content, but the episodes were also largely about B&B saying stupid things while sitting on the couch watching videos.

Daria is another case of that happening. I have seen DVD rips with the audio track from old TV rips floating around somewhere just because people want the music back.

It is a real shame when art gets modified after release due to licensing agreements

You know, I never though of this before, but I'm sure there was an episode of Northern Exposure that ended with Etta James's "At Last," and I'm positive that the DVD version doesn't have the song.

I remember it because it was one of my favorite episodes. I lost my box set years ago, so I guess I won't be verifying that.

Haha, always funny when an EU watcher starts singing the « wrong » theme song to a show and confuses all the Americans on the couch.