If you pirate instead of paying then you make distributing to your country unprofitable; that sounds like the opposite effect from what you want.
You can't be a dedicated fan of a US show outside the US and thoroughly enjoy it without pirating it first (...and then, buy the DVD). The only other option is to only watch DVDs and never talk with anyone online about the show, for fear of spoilers.
Didn't they learn anything from the Phantom Menace fiasco? The movie was the first highly and universally anticipated movie since highspeed internet became available. It was released 5 months later in France. It was a total fiasco. Instant surge of piracy, a specific screener became widespread and the only way for Star Wars fan to "survive" a five-months online lockout from their passion. This event was the origin of worldwide releases of blockbusters by movie studios, and the reason why movies nowadays get translated/localized before they are released in their own countries.
The studio has to weigh the benefits of a worldwide launch (possibly reduced piracy?) against the benefits of a staggered launch (ability to pay for and schedule proper promotion, localization, and advertising in each market.) Sometimes the studio makes the wrong choice, ether the wrong economic one or the one you don't like, but that's their prerogative.
Meta: I'm surprised be the amount of piracy entitlement on HN, which I expect has more content creators than the average net audience.
Heck, let's drop the masks, the majority of your paying customers even bought their very first computer just to be able to do that over the past decade.
I'm not advocating piracy, I'm explaining why it exists in the first place. When the pirated product is available immediately instead of months/years later, and with better features than the legit one, it's foolish to expect even paying fans not to pirate things nor look into piracy as a distribution channel. This is a challenge that content distributors need to deal with, one way or another.
Saying that people shouldn't pirate digital goods because it's illegal is all nice and well, but is this even enforceable? It's my own humble belief that it's not, not with the current state of the art, and that yelling at piracy is like yelling at windmills. Just deal with it and improve your product distribution in every possible way so that piracy is not exactly a better option.
It works, Apple proved it, Steam proved it.
This is similar to the popular treatment of abandonware.
But that's the error they will never realize because they are so used to think of the world in old terms.
