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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.
Netflix doesn't care if people outside the Approved Content Zone are watching (and paying). They only have to pretend to care, to appease the other corporations they're licensing media from.
Netflix wants global license deals for the content, they have no self interest in blocking VPN users.
Netflix will do just enough to make sure they don't get content pulled by the content owners or jeopardize future content deals. If they can convince the content owners that the VPN problem cannot be solved, all the better for both Netflix and the users.
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I had to use VPN's to watch my properly paid for Netflix account while I was stationed overseas on a US Military Base. For all intensive purposes, I was on US soil (meeting geographic requirements), using a US leased commercial provider and was a US serviceman using a US form of payment. How much more US can I be besides being on the mainland? Yet, my access was blocked. One VPN later and my viewing was restored. Sometimes we need VPN's to make it all work.
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