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Netflix Executive Admits a VPN-Blocking Policy Might Be Impossible To Enforce (theglobeandmail.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Netflix's chief product officer Neil Hunt has admitted that the company has 'no magic solution' to subscribers who use VPNs to access content not licensed for their geographical region, commenting that 'It's likely to always be a cat-and-mouse game'. Hunt notes that Netflix can only rely on lists of VPN IP addresses, and that these can easily be changed. However since Netflix subscribers pay for the service via geographically linked credit and debit cards, this article wonders if Netflix really believes that hundreds of thousands of their subscribers are permanently in migration or on holiday — and also that venerable old VPN IP addresses — ones so well-known that they are routinely challenged by services such as CloudFlare — never seem to have any trouble connecting to a Netflix account.
^^^ This. Plus the smart ones realize that that someone paying $8/month is the best they'll get: if they cut them off at the knees, we, I mean they, will just go back to being 100% pirate.
No, I'm sure Netflix doesn't care -- probably because they know they can't do anything about it, and because it's not really hurting their bottom line.
The Netflix CEO recently gave a speech as CIS where he said "sharing is good". They're happy with multiple people watching a screen, they're happy with parents sharing their password with kids (and the multi-screen option looks cheap to me), because they know people would rather have their own accounts, and likely will when they stop being broke students.
I think he gets it.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.