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Netflix Cracks Down On VPN and Proxy "Pirates"

Posted by Soulskill on from the why-people-hate-the-content-industry dept.

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.

28 of 437 comments (clear)

  1. Cat and mouse... by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Netflix is obligated to do this to maintain its licensing agreements with the Media Mafia. But it will always be a "cat and mouse" game...

    Why is Torrent Freak's logo hot pink?

    --
    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    1. Re:Cat and mouse... by QuasiSteve · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It might always be a cat and mouse game - but there's a relatively simple way to make it a lot harder for the mice; tie content to the address used for payments, rather than tying it to IP geolocation.

      DNS trickery, proxies, VPN, etc. are all very easy to set up, technologically. Try opening a U.S. bank account tied to a U.S. address as somebody who is not a U.S. resident. Good luck.
      Even if you manage to do so - at least you're now 'stuck' with the U.S. library. No vast French movie library for French subscribers, Belgian TV series for Belgian subscribers, etc. Admittedly, that may have been the primary goal for subscribers all along, but it's worth noting that there's no more library-hopping either which way.

      o/t re: pink - hasn't it been pink for a very, very long time?

    2. Re:Cat and mouse... by dgatwood · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Netflix is obligated to do this to maintain its licensing agreements with the Media Mafia.

      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.

      Dear Sony Pictures,

      Bugger off.

      Sincerely,
      Everyone.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    3. Re: Cat and mouse... by jonnyj · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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

    4. Re:Cat and mouse... by Geordish · · Score: 5, Informative

      Netflix is obligated to do this to maintain its licensing agreements with the Media Mafia.

      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?

      The issue is the existing licenses (with service providers with a lot more subscribers, and therefore able to pay more for licensing) will demand exclusivity.

      If I'm a TV provider in the uk, I don't want Netflix picking and choosing the content they want, and then undercutting me. I want to lock access to game of thrones down so they can only get it via me.

    5. Re:Cat and mouse... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Opening a US bank account etc. I agree, it's too much work for something that I can get for free anyway and just wanted to pay for because I liked the show enough that I though the authors deserved payment. OK, back to torrents.

    6. Re:Cat and mouse... by jamstar7 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's all about the cash. Different markets have different rates because they can/can't afford a single worldwide rate. Somebody making 2, 3 dollars a day (I'm looking at YOU, Pakistan!!) can't afford to pay American rates for content. Licensing agreements are designed to maximise profits.

      --
      Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
    7. Re:Cat and mouse... by grcumb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What I don't understand is why the big media conglomerates put such baffling restrictions into their licenses in the first place.

      Do sociopaths need a reason other than the desire for control?

      Well, purportedly, the reason for this is to ensure profits, but that doesn't compute. Even a business undergrad could tell you that with a little rationalisation in the business space, it would be possible for Hollywood to extend their control and improve their profits in the process. Somehow, though, the ridiculously hidebound distribution chain is successfully working against an improved industry. There are enough people with a vested interest in keeping things the way they were (the way things are is... obviously different) that they can cut off their proverbial face to spite their nose. Yes it's that illogical.

      I'm really surprised that, even with over a decade to adjust, most media companies have yet to do so. Even telcos, the other digital industry we love to hate, have learned significant lessons and are in the process of taming a frontier they initially ignored. But media - their collective consciousness defies even a modicum of logic.

      --
      Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
    8. Re:Cat and mouse... by Imrik · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Netflix is obligated to give the appearance of enforcing its licensing agreements, it doesn't have to try to succeed.

    9. Re: Cat and mouse... by Firethorn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Keep in mind that this would also mean that when military members are deployed to various locations around the world that you're restricting them to the content offered there.

      It translates to my netflix account being almost useless outside of the country.

      --
      I don't read AC A human right
    10. Re:Cat and mouse... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's all about the cash. Different markets have different rates because they can/can't afford a single worldwide rate. Somebody making 2, 3 dollars a day (I'm looking at YOU, Pakistan!!) can't afford to pay American rates for content. Licensing agreements are designed to maximise profits.

      So what is the issue with someone in Pakistan paying full US price for Netflix? Because that is what Netflix seems to be cracking down on here if the story is true.

    11. Re:Cat and mouse... by geezer+nerd · · Score: 4, Informative

      The credit card number does encode the issuing bank, and that determines the currency that the card works in. If I was in country X with a credit card from country Y, I certainly would not use that card to make regular, recurring purchases in country X. Every such transaction would be treated as a foreign transaction, with accompanying transaction and exchange fees.

    12. Re:Cat and mouse... by iluvcapra · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      The Big Media Conglomerates buy and sell the distribution rights for individual properties between each other, they will often sell foreign right for a film to a different company, and as a part of that they give up the right to sell the film in that territory.

      The important thing to understand is that "studios" do not own the rights to distribute the shows they make, these are owned by distributors. Many distributors are owned by studios, and many other distributors don't make movies or TV shows at all, they just buy independent films and market them.

      Distributors do not generally own the titles they sell outright. They usually only own the rights for a certain territory -- a standard example is a film that is funded by two different studios (many are), with one studio distributing the film in the US, and the other, in exchange for fronting some of the budget, getting the right to distribute the film in foreign territories. Netflix's own shows are perfect examples of this -- "Orange is the New Black" is produced by them, and they distribute it in the US, but they sell the foreign rights to HBO and Sony because they know they'll make more money in the UK and France on HBO than they would if they streamed it. As a condition of taking this deal, HBO required Netflix to not compete with them in their territory.

      And this is only "big" products -- most of the true independent films you see are produced by someone with cash up front, and then the rights are sold piecemeal at film markets. The rights to Japan go to company X, the rights to Germany go to company Y. This is much more efficient because each company can then decide exactly how the property should be marketed, if it is appropriate for theaters, or pay TV, or cable, what the posters should look like, will the stars matter, are there cultural factors that make the film/TV show particularly attractive (or not). All of these decisions are decided on a country by country basis, and the only way a distributor in a market can "own" the rights is by keeping other distributors from competing with the same film. That's what the right is.

      It's not stupid or evil -- the problem is people think "studios" "own" "movies", and they completely control how they're exploited commercially, and it's not true at all. It never worked that way, the business has always been about licensing of libraries of titles.

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
    13. Re:Cat and mouse... by Ramze · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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

  2. encouraging piracy by bloodhawk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I use a smart DNS service in Australia to get my Netflix access. If they do end up blocking it (currently still works fine), I will just go back to pirating my content. I am happy to pay reasonable services a reasonable rate for the content I consume, but be fucked if I will accept being forced to pay for the overpriced poor content supplied locally in Australia.

    1. Re:encouraging piracy by bloodhawk · · Score: 5, Informative

      Geo-blocking isn't actually illegal, it just isn't illegal to bypass it so they most definitely can legally stop us. They are free to implement various measures to prevent it and enforce it, we just won't be in any legal trouble for doing our best to get around it.

    2. Re:encouraging piracy by skegg · · Score: 4, Funny

      especially annoying when the software is distributed as download so there is no real answer as to why there is a 50-100% markup.

      Some software companies claim it's due to internationalisation expenses (making an EN/AU version) which I think is fair - I imagine teams of university academics, linguists and anthropologists labouring over translating the EN/US XML file into EN/AU.

  3. This is a foolish business decision. by urbanriot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As a Canadian I know all too well how many people are using services to access American Netflix content that far surpasses the Canadian content in terms quality and quantity (or at least greater quantity of what people want). I expect the majority of my friends that are using these services to access American Netflix will cancel the service outright if they can no longer access it and furthermore, they'll stop suggesting Netflix as a viable option to cable / satellite.

    1. Re:This is a foolish business decision. by wvmarle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If Netflix is not doing it, they risk losing all their content - and with it their whole business. It's not foolish from their pov, it's just what they have to do to keep their business alive.

    2. Re:This is a foolish business decision. by silviuc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The thing is that the MAFIAA does not care. Are these decisions hurting NETFLIX? Good. The MAFIAA hates the internet and streaming services. I saw an article not too long ago in which they were evaluating the impact of Google Fiber speeds on piracy and they were scared shitless. Any sane people would recognize that as a new market to fill. For fucks sake, they now have proper bandwidth lets give them content and make money, but not the MAFIAA, nope.

      They are greedy and stupid, really stupid. Just read the other day how "The Interview" made $ 15M from online sales/rentals vs. $ 3M from theatre screenings. Of course they could've made even more but the release was US only, so people took to known torrent sites and downloaded it gratis and DRM-free from there.

      I don't think these ass-hats will ever learn and they will do everything in their power to stifle progress and technology. They did it before and will continue to do it instead of working with tech companies.

  4. suggested by Netflix by oobayly · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I use unblock-us, as suggested by a friend who in turn was directed to it by Netflix staff. The stupid thing is that I would be willing to pay Netflix an extra $5 a month to view [US only] programmes, which would in turn go to Hollywood. Instead I'm giving the money to a completely separate entity. It's another case of "I'm throwing money at my monitor, why won't you take it"

  5. Better a horse in the race... by ciascu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  6. Netflix says "nothing has changed on our end" by beernutz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  7. Pay vs. Pirate by therufus · · Score: 5, Informative

    So, they don't want people paying for their service? They would rather see people pirate the movies for free?

    The entire media industry is getting more and more ridiculous by the day. Income is income, especially when it comes to the type of people they're targeting (i.e. the tech savvy). If I were a big hollywood studio licensing my works to Netflix, which I am not, I wouldn't care about stupid country restrictions. If there are people out there that want to see my works, and are willing to pay for it in this day in age, that's a great sign.

    I only recently read an article about 2014 being the worst collective year for the box office in recent history. Reading the massive amount of comments following the article, the aggregate reasoning for this was insane pricing at movie theatres (including tickets and snacks), and poor quality of movies. Everything is either a remake or a "safe" formulaic film.

    To put this entire comment into context, I'm from Australia where we get the raw end of every deal. We often get films months after they get released in the 'States for no reason, we pay more for music, TV and film than most of the world, we have "pay TV" (what Americans would call Cable) that have horrible bundles forcing you into 1 channel you want and 20 channels you don't.

    The faster the big studios, MPAA/RIAA, and distributors realise that people always get what they want, and they just need to re-arrange their outdated models so they can get a slice of the pie, the better. I don't see that happening soon though.

    --
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  8. This seems relevant, re: leaked Sony emails: by XahXhaX · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

    "Netflix are heavily resistant to enforcing stricter financial geofiltering controls, as they claim this would present a too high bar to entry from legitimate subscribers. For example, they want people to be able to use various methods of payment (e.g. PayPal) where it is harder to determine where the subscriber is based. They recognize that this may cause illegal subscribers but they (of course) would rather err that way than create barriers to legitimate subscribers to sign up.

    We have expressed our deep dissatisfaction with their approach and attitude."

  9. Funny how "free trade" is not on this level by dbIII · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  10. Re:Seriously... by dk20 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I just wish consumers would be able to take advantage of "global markets" the same way the large multinationals can.

    They are free to export their jobs to the cheapest source, but thanks to copyright laws and "region restrictions" we (the consumer) cant re-import products where they are cheaper.

    Real dvd's (not bootlegs) sell for like a dollar in China and $29 here. Why cant i import them and sell them for $10 and make a tidy profit?

    First-sale doctrine says i can, lawsuits says you cant.

  11. Re:Seriously... by jtownatpunk.net · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Their distribution model is pretty ridiculous. These people are trying like hell to pay for content that they want to watch. It would be easier and cheaper to just pirate the content but they want to pay and the media companies refuse to sell their product. They trick the media companies into being paid for their product and the media companies block them. It's absurd. Ridiculous. Asinine.