Slashdot Mirror
Netflix Begins Blocking Users Who Bypass Region Locks
An anonymous reader writes with reports that Netflix may be shutting out international VPN users. "Netflix can only stream the videos that studios make available in a given country, which has led to a booming business in workarounds (such as proxies and virtual private networks) that let you see the company's catalogs in other nations. Heck, one New Zealand internet provider practically built a service around it. However, you might not get to count on that unofficial solution for much longer. VPN operators claim to TorrentFreak that Netflix recently started blocking some users who use these technological loopholes to watch videos that would normally be verboten. The effort isn't widespread and mostly appears to focus on connections with many simultaneous Netflix sign-ins (that is, they're obviously being used for circumvention), but it's a surprise to viewers who were used to having unfettered access."
It's dupe-l-licious!
Well, OK, this "story" has an additional linky to engadget...
Netflix really does have to do this, their business requires the licenses and cooperation of the Media Mafia, who could snuff them out if they chose. There would be lawsuits, but Netflix would be essentially over.
I don't know much about why there are such restrictions, do they charge different amounts in different countries? Shouldn't it all be pretty much the same, money-wise? Is it an issue of censorship based on the particular country's politics?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/01/03/2330223/netflix-cracks-down-on-vpn-and-proxy-pirates
Excellent. Today, I think I'll learn to play the piano, master a few vintage Atari arcade games and hit on Andie MacDowell.
I guess this article was intended for a different region than the previous one?
I think it was stupid for people to go out of their way to pay for 2 services (VPN/Proxy and Netflix), one of which views them as pirates.
If you're gonna be viewed as a pirate by Netflix, save yourself the trouble and pirate the content right away at no cost. Because if you circumvent for whatever reason the restrictions and pay you're still considered a pirate by Netflix and the MPAA. In this case being honest doesn't pay.
Hello, Netflix there? With every such shenanigan you drive one more nail into the coffin: I'll never be your customer! You hear me? NEVER!
I could be wrong, but I suspect Netflix is completely fine with you VPN'ing your way to more content -- it's the movie studios that aren't ok with it. More paying customers is a Good Thing for Netflix.
I get that Netflix is doing this because the studios wants them to. But why does the studios want to limit media releases by country? If they have a new movie, what possible motive to they have to release months apart in different jurisdictions? Especaily when it comes to old (eg not new release) materials?
Is this all just some artefact of a tangled legal web that was built up before media distribution on the internet, or do they really have some profitable reason to keep me as an Australian from watching the same library of content as an American would?
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?
Switched to .torrents and a streaming device long ago. Being 100% honest is no longer workable. I will buy copies of the blu-rays and go to the movies. However when viewing is desired a downloaded blu-ray rip @ 720p is obtained and I put them through a streaming device (tivo+pytivo works well).
Owning the content in box form should entitle one to access to that content but this is simply not the case - the content providers are way difficult to deal with.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Apparently, movie studios have no interest in more paying customers.
good thing beta stops dupes!
oh...
To coordinate and block duplicate stories.
Its like they don't even talk to each other.
"Hey do you think this is a good idea for the front page?"... "Nah it was submitted yesterday..."
And in fact it was submitted to /r/technology on reddit like a week ago... Slashdot has become the last piece in the chain for news - which is sad because it puts it below Facebook.
Often they are used to bypass the decidedly not net-neutral treatment of Netflix by your ISP.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Serves them right for using netficks instead of torrenting.
http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/03/netflix-clamps-down-on-vpns/
"Update: 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."
Yeah, their strategy seems pretty lousy. Basically everyone I know is totally fine paying reasonable fees for convenient access to content -- but will of course pirate material if it's not available.
In Denmark it's not illegal to bypass country restrictions.
So if you pay for Netflix and uses VPN / SmartDNS / What ever then it's not against the law.
Not really waiting. Just anticipating the day when the Beeb wakes up and cuts us off.
I do like watching Dr. Who without the 30 minutes of commercials that BBC American subjects you to to watch 60 minutes of Who.
And there's a fair bit of other BBC content that's just not even on BBC America, although I don't have access to BBC America in the first place.
In Denmark it's not illegal to bypass country restrictions. So if you pay for Netflix and uses VPN / SmartDNS / What ever then it's not against the law.
Which doesn't mean Netflix will allow VPN in Denmark. Netflix's actions almost certainly have little to do with "law" and everything to do with being leaned on bu the Media Mafia.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
perhaps they could also show Slashdot how to block dupes.
From the Engadget linky:
Update: 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.
If this is the case, could it be that the Media Mafia are working with various ISP such as Time-Warner and Comcast? Or perhaps even the owners of the backbones?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
They do, but you aren't their paying customer, the entity which buys the distribution license in your country is their paying customer. If you can access an American service to view the content, why would anyone other than an American business buy the distribution license?
Right, because there aren't other considerations in play. I mean the actors, composers, producers, graphics designers, musicians, etc. involved in the production of a movie all have a uniform contract that discusses world wide steaming over the Internet. It isn't like there is a shitload of legal legwork involved in releasing movies for streaming.
how about because they AREN'T pirates. It is perfectly legal to bypass geo-blocking in many countries. e.g. Australia. Why do we do it, because the local services are shit and even with the cost of the VPN + Netflix it is still cheaper than the shit local services.
Fuck you^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h
I'm a subscriber to Netflix from a country other than US. Since I don't like the meager local catalog we get here I pay for an "unblock service". I don't know if you ever thought about this but that means it's proven that I (and many with me) are willing to pay MORE to watch all of Netflix. It's just that we can't pay You for it.
As I see it you got three options here; (I assume doing the right thing and make everything worldwide is not an option.)
1) Continue the status quo - Netflix, and you, will continue to get 2/3 of what I pay to watch.
2) Give me an option to pay you the full 150% fee I pay today and cut out the unblock service.
3) Try to block me from watching and recieve exactly $0 while I go download the stuff for free.
Is it really something to think about?
to the media by making it easy to browse through, search, access, and stream.
And they're paying regular price.
We live in a very strange world when "piracy" has gone from "armed crews of criminal specialists seizing tonnage shipments of goods on the high seas with cannon and sword" to "a regular schmo paying the regular price to use a regular product in the regular way in his regular living room."
Hard to believe that the word still retains any of its negative connotation at all.
"Piracy" these days sounds an awful lot like "tuesday afternoon nothing-in-particular with tea."
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Imagine a Netflix subscriber who lives in the USA, then moves to Europe for work reasons.
Unless they use a VPN to appear to still be accessing from the US, they'll lose access to certain shows.
We've reached out to Netflix to verify what it's doing
Urgh... this makes me think of that famous bash.org quote. Seriously, why the **** are Engadget using this obnoxious phrase instead of simply saying "we've contacted Netflix" or something similar?
It's the current favoured stock weasel-worded pseudo-touchy-feely (but in fact, insultingly off-the-shelf) bullshit phrase corporate PR use to sound like they *suddenly* give a f*** about a pissed-off customer they're having to contact, er... "reach out to" in response to some massive PR disaster they didn't expect.
But why would a "proper" news source feel the need to use the same irritating phrase when *they're* not the putative offending party on the defensive, but rather the people investigating the problem?
Unless this is an example of the phrase "if you lie down with dogs [i.e. hang around too many PR weasels], you get up with fleas".
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
how about because they AREN'T pirates. It is perfectly legal to bypass geo-blocking in many countries. e.g. Australia. Why do we do it, because the local services are shit and even with the cost of the VPN + Netflix it is still cheaper than the shit local services.
From Netflix USA you are considered a pirate.
Understand that from their perspective paying for content is not enough, you have to respect the restrictions of the service.
Right, because there aren't other considerations in play. I mean the actors, composers, producers, graphics designers, musicians, etc. involved in the production of a movie all have a uniform contract that discusses world wide steaming over the Internet. It isn't like there is a shitload of legal legwork involved in releasing movies for streaming.
They're mostly work for hire or to receive a percentage of the gross (if they're smart) or the net (if they're stupid), you don't renegotiate those contracts per country. That would be extremely fooling since the movie is already made, you'd give everyone involved the chance to ask any price they want. The problem at least in the early days was that many movies and series were sold with exclusive distribution rights often down to the national level due to the traditional broadcasting networks. That means Netflix can't go to one company and ask for rights, they have to sub-licenses from many different entities. For newer material this is changing, typically the production company keeps the online streaming rights and only promise to not exercise them while it airs. Of course they still want to gouge Netflix as much as they can, but it's not the same fractured landscape of rights as it used to be.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Hollywood bullies Netflix into implementing draconian DRM.
But like any abusive relationship they're too afraid of losing their sugar daddy to speak out against it in public.
From the leaked Sony emails: "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."
Yeah, right. I'll consider Netflix "heavily resistant" to draconian DRM when they launch a PR campaign publicly skewering Hollywood for asking for it.
Instead this leaked email tells us only that in private they're mildly uncomfortable with draconian DRM but at the end of the day they don't really give a shit and will fall in line in public for The Almighty Hollywood.
Keep taking those beatings, Netflix. Keep doing your abuser's bidding.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
This won't necessarily stop people from trying to get bogus billing addresses to get around this, but that's the credit card company's problem to crack down on, not Netflix's, and carries a not entirely insignificant risk of criminal charges for fraud that tends to discourage even people who might otherwise consider doing it from stealing credit cards in the first place.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
So how do I go about setting up a home router with a VPN exit point, for my own personal use while traveling? I've seen some of the various *WRT and other router firmware packages with VPN servers, but I have never managed to get one to work. Couldn't tell if I was messing something up on the router, or on my laptop / mobile phone client, or it was some firewall I was hitting at my hotel or hotspot I was connected to (although my university's VPN usually would usually function properly, so I don't think that was it).
Any cookbook instructions out there that will let me get something working?
Or if they're very smart, they just get paid up front... Have you any idea how few people actually get "gross"? And gross still usually means gross of distributor revenue, minus exhibition fees, which is to say, after Netflix has taken their cut. Nobody who merely works on a movie gets first-dollar gross.
Which is good, because Netflix adds nothing to the actual value chain for new titles. It's just a subscription Video-on-Demand service, except ON THE INTERNET!
It's a great way of watching older movies and TV shows, and for the people that own the rights to those to get some revenue from the "long tail" without committing to a DVD, but if you've made a new film and the best distribution you can get is Netflix, you're screwed, you'll never make your costs back.
I'm just speaking as someone who occasionally gets paid contractual gross in deferred deals. Netflix and VOD pay-through never remotely comes close to market rate for my work. I think a lot of the "streaming" business models are sorta scams, particularly for new filmmakers, they can't come close to generating the revenue theatrical and TV distribution can, and Netflix is sorta bluffing people on wether or not they can actually generate the revenue to sustainably create new original content. Netflix keeps making stuff like House of Cards, but that show costs over $6 mil an episode, there's no way they're making their nut back on those, and if even they can't make their costs back, how on Earth is some independent filmmaker supposed to profit from streaming distribution? HoC has stars, and is a franchise title, and has a co-production company plowing tens of millions of their own money into the project, and is selling the rights to HBO in Europe and Sony in Asia.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Netflix just cut me off, on a Sunday afternoon. No warning, not even an email. My device said it was not allowed to connect. I had to activate the device.
At the Netflix site, instead of the 6 devices I had been paying for, I now only get 2 HD devices for the same money, and have to pay $4.00 extra to get to get up to 4 HD devices.
What a bunch of cowards!!!!!!!!!!!!
So the American license is the global license. But they don't give global licenses, because they can extract money selling the exact same thing 200 times to 200 different people. But reality wins. If you don't allow global access under the more expensive US license, then you'll have pirates, as the streaming options in most other places are inferior.
Learn to love Alaska
actually no he isn't considered a pirate by them either. Netflix is quite happy with this scenario, they even happily tell people how to do it. Piracy is about accessing content you are NOT paying for, they are paying for the content. The only people upset are the media companies and local distributers, but under no scenario is it piracy as it is all perfectly legal and not in breach of any copyright laws.
Most likely, movie studios are more or less ok with it too but can't show it too blatantly. After all, more paying Netflix customers means more revenue for them, too.
However, movie studios depend on distributors in various territories. In particular, in territories where the content is dubbed or subtitled into the local language(s). Often, these distributors want exclusive rights. That's ok for the dubbed/subtitled version but this also means that the movie studio can no longer license the English version in the respective territory. So they can't license it to Netflix for these territories, either.
In order to appease the exclusive distributors, they have to be able to show they are at least trying to prevent any circumvention of regional restrictions.
From Netflix USA you are considered a pirate.
Understand that from their perspective paying for content is not enough, you have to respect the restrictions of the service.
Finally an intelligent comment on /. and especially in this type of conversation.
Can HOSTS files prevent this?
They're mostly work for hire or to receive a percentage of the gross (if they're smart) or the net (if they're stupid),
Or if they're very smart, they just get paid up front... Have you any idea how few people actually get "gross"? And gross still usually means gross of distributor revenue, minus exhibition fees, which is to say, after Netflix has taken their cut. Nobody who merely works on a movie gets first-dollar gross.
That's all covered by "work for hire" which is why I put it first, whether it's up front, on delivery, per hour, fixed fee or whatever. You get paid an agreed rate, they get all the rights. Makes a lot of sense too, if you're not in a position to make any creative input or deliver an acting performance that'll affect the audience then it's not your achievement if it's a success or your fault if it bombs.
Which is good, because Netflix adds nothing to the actual value chain for new titles. It's just a subscription Video-on-Demand service, except ON THE INTERNET! (...) I'm just speaking as someone who occasionally gets paid contractual gross in deferred deals. Netflix and VOD pay-through never remotely comes close to market rate for my work. I think a lot of the "streaming" business models are sorta scams, particularly for new filmmakers, they can't come close to generating the revenue theatrical and TV distribution can, and Netflix is sorta bluffing people on wether or not they can actually generate the revenue to sustainably create new original content.
Theatrical distribution is its own thing, but for TV you're arguing both for and against "on the Internet" making a difference. Whatever they broadcast today, they could stream over TCP/IP tomorrow. DVRs has already provided VOD-ish features for broadcast TV. This year HBO will offer a web only service in the US, we've already had something similar here a while in Norway through HBO Nordic. Netflix is in a decent position to be the "online middleman" like Spotify is for music.
Of course they say that Spotify pays too little too but the market has mostly quit buying CDs and digital downloads so what will they do? If people cancel their cable subscriptions and watch what is on Netflix, YouTube and HBO web with a helping of torrents for what's not you either put your content online and get poor margins or you don't and lose out on much of the market. Here in Norway some 88% of households have broadband and 85% of those can stream online video at a reasonable quality with 4+ Mbit.
Remember that it's not just the long tail, it's also the wide tail. For example if I wanted to watch NFL here in Norway, I could get an NFL game pass and watch any game I want live and in HD. On the TV you'll probably not find anything more than the Superbowl, maybe some more obscure sports channel will send it but it's a very limited audience here. Porn has massively embraced it, I'm sure there's an adult channel on most networks but on the web there's absurdly many.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Nope! You're loss of service (with no refund I'd bet) is worth the sanctity of the MPAA.
It's not pirating, it is breaking their terms of service. Pirating implies that a person "use[s] or reproduce[s] (another's work) for profit without permission, usually in contravention of patent or copyright."
The only thing that we can be accused of is breaking a contract (that's not even really a contract).
At the end of the day, this isn't Hulu. This is Netflix where you pay your $8.00 and then you view content, that's about it. They don't have localised advertisers to pander to and the geo-location bullshit only exists because the media companies make stupid global broadcasting contracts with people for more "profit". In Australia, the biggest issue is Foxtel who are basically a giant walking cock and balls that enjoys fucking consumers. It's basically a mixture of third-line forcing and cartels, it's bloody outrageous! In fact, as Foxtel have just lowered their prices and are changing up how they do business in preparation for Netflix's launch in Australia I would bet money on them being responsible for this bullshit.
Total bullshit all around, including your argument.
it what possible way is it an intelligent comment. It is an ignorant comment. firstly they are not pirates as they aren't stealing anything or breaching any copyright laws. secondly Netflix is quite happy with them using content out of there region, they even made a point to post that the story is wrong and that they haven't changed anything with regards to VPN access.
I have firewalled dns as a security measure. One hack is to point someone at a foreign dns server bad guys control. So I guess I am off to another provider if they do this. Disappointing.
the signs of the rot were there when they went after DVD Jon for having the audacity to provide a work around so that he could watch DVD's he'd legally bought on his own personal computer that just didn't have their blessing as it was running Linux...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
And when the global license prices adjust to compensate?
Cool, now slashdot runs adverts for the bad guys. Pay us and you will get your shiny files back. Very smart.
There is more to it than that though. When I travelled a lot more I always had a server running at home (in the US) that I could proxy through to act like I was home if I had to (sites requiring local IPs, etc).
Occasionally I would watch Netflix through my proxy at home. If I pay for Netflix in the US and run through my own home network to watch said paid for service, why shouldn't I be allowed to do that just because I'm in Brazil or Germany or wherever else? If I'm remotely controlling my home computer through VNC--legitimately--and I decide to open Netflix in my browser, suddenly I'm doing something wrong? I think this boils down more to intent than logistics.
I do get that there are legitimate reasons why this should be restricted, but not everyone doing this is an outright pirate nor should be considered as such.
It is more problematic than prices. Availability, delays for years sometimes, the licenses being used to sell something else (shitty cable service). A whole host of problems.
This comment is not available for VPN connections.
I could just pay some amercan friend some extra to pay my netflix subscription for me. We'll call it a gift. As in, he subscribed to netflix and lets me use it as a gift. 'm sure that violates netflixs TOS, but then again, just using netflix in the first place propably does. TOSes are useless because they are so overly broad everyone just ignores them anyways.
It would be easy to move IP's around dynamically so that when poisoned or unresponsive IP blocks spotted, several All American as apple pie (Preferably Texans) are blocked. Obviously the first VPN provider to make a private settlement with Netflix is going to have a market advantage.
A class action is going to prove very expensive (but lucrative for greedy lawyers) if they want to go down this path of assumptions.
Furthermore, the discovery documents about blocking will become a huge liability for Netflix should the dirt come out - which should give the lawyers even more leverage and money.
High time some cease and desist letters are sent out. If these VPN guys can buy/sell/swap IP ranges fast enough, they may even get a case for racketeering.
Pirating implies that a person "use[s] or reproduce[s] (another's work) for profit without permission, usually in contravention of patent or copyright."
That is... not the definition of piracy that almost anyone uses. No profit needs be involved with content piracy/unauthorized sharing/copyright infringement/whathaveyou.
Unless you're counting "not giving money to the owners of the media you use" as personal profit, a definition that most content sharers would not want to embrace.
The problem is the whole concept of country codes, which was an attempt by local providers not to compete.
Um, they just want to use Netflix. It adds value to the media by making it easy to browse through, search, access, and stream.
I'd counter that you're not getting what you paid for when it comes to Netflix streaming, as Netflix's streaming selection is absolutely horrible and gets smaller thanks to media company shenanigans.
The one exception being Netflix's original content available only through Netflix streaming. Supposedly they're high-quality, and available only through Netflix, so I could see a number of people trying to access it through VPNs for that reason. Do House of Cards or Orange is the New Black have any region restrictions? I would guess no, it would be dumb for Netflix to do it, but nothing surprises me anymore.
Maybe they use VPN by default to bypass deep packet inspection and content-based throttling?
Maybe they use it to get a good route through another backhaul ISP when the routing tables are screwy.
Different shows are just a fringe benefit.
From the other summary: "The Android application started to force Google DNS which now makes it harder to use DNS based location unblockers". So if it's directly accessing 8.8.4.4 and 8.8.8.8, it'll ignore your hosts file.
You can get pid grosses work-for-hire; work-for-hire doesn't necessarily mean "all up front." It just means the copyright is under the corporation's name. Almost everyone above the line is "work-for-hire," the only exception is a spec script, and even those writers will generally agree to designate their work as for-hire.
The difference for Netflix isn't so much the Internet aspect as much as its the revenue model. They charge a flat rate for an all-you-can-eat service and this means the actual pay-through to the rights holders is a lot lower than VOD or premium cable. They want to make Netflix look like a premium cable service though, and they want to make Netflix appear relevant to people selling new content, and they want to position the Netflix brand and being for something more than just old episodes of St. Elsewhere and shitty Asylum movies, so they fund some premium content. But their premium content offerings are a potemkin village. And it's not like people like Starz haven't come to them with premium content, Netflix just won't change their model to offer premium-tier pricing, probably because it dilute their brand and would screw up their oh-so-precious user metrics.
From the perspective of a filmmaker (the evil Media Mafia), it makes sense to squeeze Netflix to the bone because they really don't bring much to the table in terms of distribution -- they might get you eyeballs but they have a lot of trouble turning this into money, and the money they do get they try to keep every penny of.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.