The point was to connect computers together, and users, whatever their geographical location was. I'm still not certain why we allowed geographical restrictions to exist on these networks of tubes.
Don't worry, with new laws requiring x% of content has to be made in a country, we can ensure that geolocking is enshrined in both old and modern laws.
These laws are simply ridiculous. Good content simply sells. Just look at Parasites, Money Heist. International success from small local foreign studios.
There was a business need so someone stepped up to fill the void by geomapping IPs. Given legal compliance concerns this was inevitable, even completely ignoring the profit potential from even very coarse-grained (ie. country-level) differential pricing.
Actively preventing this would have necessitated some pretty ugly tradeoffs which no one was incentivized to make.
The point was to connect computers together, and users, whatever their geographical location was. I'm still not certain why we allowed geographical restrictions to exist on these networks of tubes.