I think all that Sonos does is filter what they present to you in the available services, based on the location in your account settings at www.Sonos.com
I don’t believe Sonos does any “blocking”, all of that is handled, to my knowledge, by the individual streams, although I’m not sure I know exactly how they do that, if it’s by IP, or some other system.
I suspect there’s some sort of legal agreement between Sonos and each streaming company, and would expect that there would in fact be a clause, most often, asking Sonos to do everything possible not to break applicable laws around copyrights, including streaming in areas where the license for the streaming company doesn’t exist.
Unfortunately, in many cases, Sonos has apparently not been given clearance by the streaming companies, even when the streaming company has received the necessary local approvals for streaming rights. This could be just a lack of follow through (why think of Sonos when it’s not your focused on the streaming company you work for, not all ‘associated’ possible ways to stream your companies content). This is even more evident now in the areas serviced by the various voice assistants, but has always been a small issue.
I’ve done some work (likely thousands of hours) in getting clearances for streaming music in various locales, all for an ultimately unpublished game, and I certainly feel for the hoops that Sonos needs to jump through, with each individual streaming company they have to deal with. And frankly, with the streaming companies themselves, having to jump through various hoops set up by copyright laws in each country, and often requiring special permissions from the various governments.
It’s easy to point the finger at Sonos, they’re the end point in this long chain. As an example, I suspect Sonos will likely get blamed for the upcoming BBC fiasco, when the BBC pulls their feed from TuneIn and by extension, Sonos Radio, although Sonos has absolutely no control over that.
