Why the Podcasts app is region locked?

I am very upset with the practice of BlackBerry of locking many apps to Canada/US exclusively while there are no apparent reasons to do so. I can understand locking music/video/market apps that are supposed to be under copyright restrictions regarding the distribution of media but what is the reason for locking the Podcasts app on the PlayBook, especially when this device is currently so limited in available apps?

This is a podcast aggregator and for a limited number of podcasts since one cannot add his own podcast feed. Anyone can subscribe and listen to podcasts using any number of applications such as iTunes, Google Reader etc. What is the point of restricting the availability of this app to the world? What kind of copyright does it violate?

The same goes for the News application which is a news rss feed aggregator that collects news from various sources similarly to other PlayBook apps e.g News360 which are not region locked. What is the explanation for this restriction?

Originally Posted by paspro

What is the explanation for this restriction?

Just a guess, it is probably related to whom will get the higher percentage of profit... I don't see any valid reason than that... :rolleyes:

Yeah I'll chime in that I'm unhappy about both Podcasts and Newsreader, there is no sense in this decision.

However there is a BAR file of the latest newsreader knocking about if you look around here :)