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Geoblocking, Licensing, and Piracy Make For Tough Choices at Netflix (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: If Netflix's promise to invigilate users' IP addresses and block VPNs is more than a placatory sop to the lawyers, and if the studios would rather return to fighting piracy by lobbying governments to play whack-a-mole with torrent sites, the streaming company's long-term efforts to abolish or reduce regional licensing blockades could falter this year. This article examines the possible hard choices Netflix must make in appeasing major studios without destroying the user-base that got their attention in the first place. I wonder how long VPN vendors will keep bragging that their services provide worldwide streaming availability, and whether some of them will actually do a decent job of it.
The TPP and TTIP set up the regulatory frameworks for the IP and media industry to shut down the torrent sites pretty much for good. They won't go after the sites themselves, they'll just keep suing little people into bankruptcy until the rest of them learn to stay away.
The US media companies have spent a lot of money and time setting up the whole TPP and TTIP deal. They weren't doing it for the fun of it. In the future, if you don't have a licence for the stuff your watching, they'll be coming for ya. I think the next step is to 'fix', via some aspect of those agreements, the displays that are sold to the public so that unlicensed media can't be played.