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."
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.
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.
Apparently, movie studios have no interest in more paying customers.
Netflix doesn't have a choice here; they get most of their content from licensing deals and likely were pressured into this by those providers.
The best thing you could do is support netflix and watch their original programming, so they can make more and cut out the established Big Content providers. (Until Netflix becomes one and we move on to the next new thing.)
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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).
I didn't think that Netflix was required by contract to go to extraordinary measures to block un-blocking. 100% security is impossible. Maybe some content owners started complaining to Netflix and threatening to pull content.
This is a case of the content owners punishing paying users. The un-blockers are all paying users. The pirates aren't. The content owners are making more pirates, and refusing the money of paying customers. And wondering why their business model isn't working.
Learn to love Alaska
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