Urgh, movies in the internet era

This has been said many times by many others, mostly more eloquent then I will. But, it is annoying me and I want to rant. Buying or renting movies sucks! I want to rent (or buy) a movie to watch (take my money!) but it is so difficult. Especially if I don't want some obsolete piece of plastic to store it on.

It should be easy: I go online, I find a movie I want to watch, I pay some money, I watch the movie. Possibly with a downloading step in there too. I won't even object if the movie deletes itself after I watch it if the price is reasonable. This pretty much works for music via ITunes (only ITunes as far as I can see. This pains me because I hate Apple and everything they stand for and I would prefer not to give them money. But Amazon (for example) does not work in NZ).

I have pretty much given up on legally getting a movie to watch on my computer in NZ via a wire. I had high hopes of watching films on my Nexus 7. In the UK this worked pretty well, I used the Play store selected a movie and tried to pay. My NZ card wouldn't work. Luckily I have a UK one, and that was OK. I watched the movie, it was good.

Now I am in Canada. I would like to rent/buy another movie. I go to the Play store and select a movie, but now I can't use either card. I don't have a Canadian card, so I can't rent a movie in Canada - WTF?! I can't connect to the UK Play store because it selects the country based on (I presume) IP address. And none of this works at all in NZ. It is all ridiculous, the business model does not account for people who leave their home country or live outside a few select countries. It is all so sad and stupid. And then people wonder why their is movie piracy. The industry deserves to die for this. It makes me so angry because the solution is so easy, and yet it is avoided in the short-sighted belief that more money can be made.