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Netflix Cracks Down On VPN and Proxy "Pirates"
An anonymous reader sends this unfortunate report from TorrentFreak: Due to complicated licensing agreements Netflix is only available in a few dozen countries, all of which have a different content library. Some people bypass these content and access restrictions by using VPNs or other circumvention tools that change their geographical location. This makes it easy for people all around the world to pay for access to the U.S. version of Netflix, for example. The movie studios are not happy with these deviant subscribers as it hurts their licensing agreements. ... Over the past weeks Netflix has started to take action against people who use certain circumvention tools. The Android application started to force Google DNS which now makes it harder to use DNS based location unblockers, and several VPN IP-ranges were targeted as well.
At least Netflix push back - I gave up on LoveFilm entirely because they went the extra mile in preventing Linux access (at least back when I tried it). I am happy to keep paying for Netflix as long as they are happy to keep pushing, I can accept that they're going to have to meet studio demands part-way to keep getting content. As long as somebody's not busy breaking Pipelight, somebody's creating award-winning independent content from the ground up, somebody's doing simultaneous worldwide releases, somebody's trying to support Linux, somebody's open-sourcing parts of their core tech, I'd rather they cut the deals to keep them in the game, at least their chips are big enough to make a difference.
Maybe it's just because I (sometimes) can find more classic films I want on Amazon Instant Video, but I get HDCP errors or "device not supported" and think, I bet it's a noisier debate when the Netflix reps sit down with the various MPAA negotiators.
http://www.engadget.com/2015/0...
Netflix tells us that there's been "no change" in the way it handles VPNs, so you shouldn't have to worry about the company getting tough any time soon. With that said, these blocking errors started showing up in the past few weeks, so it's not clear what would have prompted them.
(stolen from DaBum) I am dyslexia of borg - your ass will be laminated.
So, if the FCC decides to enforce Net Neutrality like Netflix wants... wouldn't that include region blocking like this?
Yeah, I understand that. What I don't understand is why the big media conglomerates put such baffling restrictions into their licenses in the first place. Is it to comply with licensing agreements that they made? Is it truly idiotic licensing all the way down?
As far as I'm concerned, the general public needs to keep fighting this crap. Whenever the content police tighten the screws, change to a different approach. For example, you might convince people with fast upstream and downstream connections to resell a small portion of their bandwidth for other people's Netflix streaming in a sort of peer-to-peer VPN approach so that it will be impossible for Netflix to cut off people using the VPNs without cutting off a lot of their U.S. customers. Encourage U.S. customers to use location-hiding VPNs, too. And so on.
The reality is that in this day and age, nothing short of worldwide licensing makes sense. In a world of physical media, there was at least some plausibility to the notion of export restrictions and region coding. In a world where humans have cast off the shackles of physical bodies... err... media (sorry, movie trailer authoring mode kicked in for a minute there), those limitations are archaic and silly, not to mention unenforceable. They need to go away. We need to kill the restrictions with fire. There's simply no room in a modern world for such pointlessness. It quite literally does not benefit anyone anywhere, from the far end of the content supply chain all the way to the customer. All it does is piss people off for no reason.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
And then a subscriber goes on holiday with their tablet, and are getting the incorrect content, and breaking licencing agreements. Or a pool of people from different countries pay for an account each, and share the details. Or someone pays for an account on behalf of someone else in a different country...
Netflix may be obligated to do this, but the media companies will see their revenues fall from my family if they push it.
I don't need the movie industry. I have my bike, my running shoes, my surfboard, my kids, my dog, my football season ticket and my church. Movies fill in my leftover time. UK Netflix has such weak content that I'll simply cancel my subscription when Hola stops working. I won't go to the cinema or buy DVDs instead. I'll just walk the dog more.
It happened with music. When I discovered Pandora, I started buying music weekly because it opened my eyes to new bands and new genres. Then Pandora got closed down in the UK. I haven't bought music for 2+ years. I can't easily find new music so I do other stuff instead.
Farewell, Hollywood.
Goo
Funny how "free trade" is not on this level. For instance Australia recently had to take on some of the onerous US copyright laws as part of a "free trade" deal yet the benefit of consumers being able to purchase copyrighted material directly from the USA is not only not happening, but the people who take extra steps to buy such items are labelled as "pirates".
IMHO it's worth avoiding such vendors who have so much contempt for their customers as to insult them in such a way.
The above poster is not joking. When the "titanium" Mac came out a newspaper did a cost breakdown to show it, and that was when a flight from Sydney to Hawaii was relatively much more expensive than today
Apple fanboys please hold your fire, MS and others do the same price gouging screwovers - especially annoying when the software is distributed as download so there is no real answer as to why there is a 50-100% markup.
http://time.com/3652040/movies...
Just experienced a year of that. When Hulu did it I just shut off the account. Content providers are worse than whores. At least whores don't have a manual you need to memorize to comply with all of the bullshit laws lobbyists obtain to bend us over.
Second that. I love to pay for movies but don't make it hard for me. I will pay for any service if it (1) gives me the same selection of titles and quality as freely available torrents (hard to match, eh :), (2) lets me keep and rotate a small collection of downloaded movies for offline viewing at any time (in places without internet connection), and (3) accepts payment from any country. Alternatively, if a studio would accept a direct payment without restrictions, I would take effort to pay after viewing their movie. Until that, I will be using torrents and not paying, as there is no obvious way to do that without a major pain in the ass.
I investigated Netflix some time ago. It had too limited selection (in Canada, anyway).
Example: Community is only available on Hulu Plus in the USA, but its available on Swedish Netflix.
It's called tiered marketing and discriminatory pricing. I'm not sure which business school you went to, but the AACSB accredited one I went to described this situation pretty well to the undergrads, and it makes perfect sense - it's just complex. They use it because it works best in squeezing the most profit out of each segment. All media companies use it, to a degree. I recall in college, I'd order my MBA texts from India - "International Editions" that were paperback versions of my classmates' books. They were usually full color paperback versions of the exact same textbooks. I was able to buy them for around $20 (including shipping from India) where the course book in the US was hardback and $125.
With the book analogy, it's a kind of region locking. Yes, if you know how, you can get around it with a bit of time and effort.. even if it's not exactly the same quality. Also, you can just borrow the book from a friend or share as needed... or even use a photocopier for just the excerpts you need. Most people will buy the book, and the one for their region, and that works well enough to not worry about those skirting the system. Like enforcing any system (even the legal/criminal justice system), there's diminishing returns for protecting against cheating it.
Game makers and DVD/ Bluray producers do the same thing with region locking. They don't want you to buy the content for $5 from China when they can get you to pay $30 or $50 here in the states. Media distributors for movies do the same. Their model is set to get cash from theaters first, then pay-per-view and DVDs, then cable movie networks, then Netflix, and then general cable networks with commercial breaks - pretty much in that order. They have all that sliced up by regions, too - mostly because people in different regions are willing to pay different prices for the same things, but also so they can control the length of each phase of distribution for each region independently. It's not easy to untangle because there are so many different companies involved that sell distribution rights to different distribution channels in each region and then reward content-makers as a percentage based upon that distribution. That's before countries get involved with taxes, copyrights, streaming rights, etc. as well. That's not even to mention that some actors get paid a percentage of one distribution channel profits and a different percentage of another distribution channel profits - written into their movie contracts. Other actors get residuals from syndication from TV episodes. It really is licensing "all the way down" as the grandparent post suggests. Netflix follows its licensing agreements, Sony, etc follows the ones it made with producers, directors, actors, etc. Even with Hulu - watch what they do with episodes. Sometimes one episode out of a season will be missing due to licensing - and it'll be because of some obscure part of a contract not allowing the episode to be shown because of a clause for an actor or for the background music.
Netflix would love to have a simpler model. Hulu would, too (well, yes and no b/c they're currently owned by Comcast and others that want to spin it off). Hulu got streaming rights for computers, but didn't think ahead to get the licenses for streaming to any internet device... which is partly why there's Hulu Plus. I don't know about now, but when Hulu Plus first came out, I could watch some things on Hulu on my laptop, others on Hulu Plus on my smart TV, but Hulu Plus wouldn't show all of Hulu's content. I had to switch back and forth between them. Different licenses for different methods of distribution. Negotiating for other methods of distribution after the fact would almost certainly lead to higher charges for content, and then higher pricing for Hulu or Netflix subscribers (unless the subscriber growth was substantial)
Hollywood is a huge industry - and getting them to switch their model is a bit like telling the American public that we should go ahead and switch everything to
No, they shouldn't.
If a customer pays for access to the U.S. movie library, they shouldn't be forced to use the Norwegian Netflix library when they go on a skiing vacation to Lillihammer.
You should get access to whatever you pay for, not whatever is licensed for the country they happen to be visiting. What if there is no Netflix license agreement in the country one visits? Does that mean they have zero access to the cloud-based streaming service they are paying for?
Ken