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Bell Media President Says Canadians Are 'Stealing' US Netflix Content
iONiUM writes: Today the Bell Media president claimed that Canadians are "stealing" U.S. Netflix, saying the practice is "stealing just like stealing anything else." She went on to say that it is socially unacceptable behavior, and "It has to become socially unacceptable to admit to another human being that you are VPNing into U.S. Netflix. Like throwing garbage out of your car window, you just don't do it. We have to get engaged and tell people they're stealing." Of course, I'm sure the fact that Bell Media profits from Canadian content has nothing to do with these remarks.
How tough are slander laws in Canada? She just called legitimate Netflix subscribers thieves. I think she should be prepared to have some evidence of theft being committed, or face the consequences in court.
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Sounds to me like region locking content has become socially unacceptable in this globally connected age. These people are not only paying for the content, they're paying extra on top of it just to get around your arbitrary restrictions.
Maybe it's time for people like her to join us in the 21st century.
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If a Canadian drives to the US to buy products in a US store, don't they have to declare them to customs? I think they mostly don't care about the bottle of Coca-Cola in your cup holder, but if you buy something expensive they might charge you some kind of import duty and/or taxes on it.
I think this is the kind of argument the Bell Media person was more or less trying to make. She owns the exclusive rights to a basket of content in Canada. If someone is going overseas to acquire this content, they are doing basically the same thing that a physical shopper is doing when they go to the US to buy a product that some Canadian store also wants to sell.
I think the purpose of tarrifs and duties is to specifically hinder this kind of ad-hoc cross-border arbitrage. Of course it's well nigh impossible to do for intellectual content.
There are good arguments to be made that Bell Media is just greedy and using monopoly position to extract rent from Canadians.
But there may be other arguments -- Bell's costs may be higher for reasons outside their control (ie, higher taxes, weak exchange rate, etc).
I fail to see the immorality of my actions due to the fact that I circumvent a licensing agreement that I was not party to.
Great, so Bell paid for an "exclusive" license for NBC content in Canada. Why should their agreement have anything to do with what sites I access? Last time I checked, Bell Media is not the governing body of Canada.
For the end user this is neither a copyright violation nor a licensing violation. It may violate Netflix terms of service, but I do not believe that violating a websites terms of service is necessarily immoral.
You're importing copyrighted content from someone without the legal authority to distribute said content in Canada.
Hence the VPN. They are delivering the content to the US. The Canadian is then transporting it across the border, for person use (not redistribution).
This is exactly as illegal as buying a DVD and a book from Sam's in the states, and then driving it home to Canada with you across the border. Which is to say, "not even slightly illegal".
Many lawyers disagree with you (see the section headed "But is faking a U.S. IP address illegal?")
Specifically:
"Prof. Fewer said he doubts that the use of a VPN qualified as the breaking of a digital lock on a device designed to prohibit unauthorized copying, since it merely cloaks a user’s IP address."
How do you steal a widget if the law in the location you stole it from defines it as not stealable? So yes, the US law matters when talking about stealing US things.
And commwealth has nothing to do with law, so the Statute of Anne may or may not apply. I'm in a commonwealth country, and it doesn't apply. So your corrections are incorrect. "Member states have no legal obligation to one another". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
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