American video services all launch with no licensing rights for Canadian broadcasting. It's clear that foreign licensing is nontrivial and isn't something a startup would tackle right away, but often years will pass without any progress. I'm wondering, specifically: why is this the case, and who are the people who care to keep it this way?

I imagine two major scenarios:

First, licensing is complex everywhere and Canada just doesn't have enough people to justify figuring it out.

Second, some controlling stakeholder (US or Canadian) is actively blocking rights from being granted. Maybe it would lose them money somehow, in which case my question is, who and how?

As a sum-up, if I'm willing to pay for a service (like rdio's vdio, or GoogleTV, or American Netflix), what entities would be upset / lose out? Are they the same entities that are involved in the licensing process?

As a more broad question, not just applying to Canada: how can we fix this?