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.

Comments

Re:Netflix? Try the studios instead

[AK Marc]

Yup. Netflix gains nothing from this. They get a subscription for about $10 for a streaming account no matter where you are (at least from what I've seen, they aren't discounted greatly in poorer countries). So if they block VPNs, they'll lose subscribers (thus income). And the studios will lose because those who cancel will fall back to piracy. Only if the studios think they can win against piracy would they think this is a good idea. Do they still think they can win against piracy?

The Netflix model should run like iTunes. I'm multi-national in iTunes. My US account uses a US address and US credit card. My non-US account uses non-US card and address. I can play from both anywhere in the world. I can download to/from both anywhere in the world. The account is billing linked, not location linked. Netflix should move to a similar fashion, and the studios clamp down on international transactions from US addresses as a money laundering and stop worrying about where someone is, but where their money comes from. Works for iTunes (who has lots of content), and much easier than region coding things based on IP of the user.

Re:There are a lot of IP addresses out there

[BradleyUffner]

Can't block them all.

iptables -A INPUT -j DROP

Re:Regional blocking is just inaccurate at best

[Mashiki]

I'm not actively trying to bypass their geolimits and apparently my living room, according by google is in sweden and by netflix it's ca, us. No VPN connections in use.

Fun, google is reporting I'm in Norway and "netflix is not available at your location." I'm sitting ~170km outside of Toronto, in Ontario. Geoblocking is garbage, the only thing it does is push people to piracy.

Netflix's biggest challenge

[whoever57]

Data caps. I expect that's what keeps Reed Hastings awake at nights. When people expect 4K streams but their ISP charges an arm and a leg for the data in those 4K streams, Netflix becomes less viable.

Re: Netflix? Try the studios instead

[Z00L00K]

The whole region restricting scheme is just stupid and is much like the prohibition of alcohol in the US in the 20's - it feeds crime.

Add to it that it also discriminates - you can't bring movies with you that's only available in your home country if you live in another country in another region.