Netflix's Doomed Battle Against VPNs Begins (venturebeat.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Australian unblocking service uFlix recently announced that Netflix has begun implementing its plans to block users who take advantage of web proxies and VPNs to get around location restrictions on content. Shortly afterward, the service rolled out a fix to restore service, despite Netflix's efforts. The article makes the case that Netflix is probably just fine with this: "Netflix, ultimately, is caught between a rock and a hard place. The company has gone on record many times criticizing the way content licensing deals are negotiated globally. Of course, Netflix would love to be able offer a consistent library of content around the world. But it also has to stay on-side with those who hold the rights to the content, otherwise they may threaten to pull shows and movies altogether. The result is that Netflix is going through the motions of blocking VPNs, even though it understand perfectly well that these measures are doomed to fail."

Comments

You can't fix stupid

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

And by stupid I mean the licensing deals. We're in 2016 and there's still idiots out there who can't understand that people can't subscribe to 10+ services to watch everything they want.

That's why I'm staying with Netflix. Either they get the deals and also my money, or nobody gets it. This is entertainment, we can live without it.

Re:You can't fix stupid

[JaredOfEuropa]

Thankfully the Pirate Bay has none of those issues.

I rather liked the policy long held by Dutch legislators: "We don't like piracy, but until there's a reasonable legal alternative, we're not going to do anything about it". This held for a good while for downloadable music and still held for movies when this policy sadly was abandonded. And it seems that at least a few politicians are getting increasingly pissed off about DRM, regional licensing and region codes. I'd like to see the old policy revived and applied per work: if certain content is available in other countries but not here (at similar prices), it's ok to pirate it. Sadly international agreements probably preclude such a policy, and if TTIP is implemented, publishers could sue the Dutch government for this in secret court.

Re:You can't fix stupid

[SeaFox]

And by stupid I mean the licensing deals. We're in 2016 and there's still idiots out there who can't understand that people can't subscribe to 10+ services to watch everything they want.

No. They could subscribe to 10+ services to get everything they want, it's just very few people would do that because of the hassle of dealing with 10+ companies and the price for doing so.

Consider the Roku and its customized "channels". There's no reason someone one couldn't have 10+ non-free channels on their device. If they want to search for a specific item and aren't sure where it is, like other streaming devices, the Roku will tell you which service has it of the ones you have.

The real problem is every service wanting you to pay $8/mo or more for just their content and wanting to bill you directly. After about three services you're paying way to much for entertainment. If you only had to pay $2-3 dollars a month and could have all the billing details handled by Roku (or your Apple ID, or Amazon) people who be more willing to subscribe to multiple services to get what they want.

Oooooo, a customized bundle $2-$3/mo services chosen by the consumer, but billed together and all accessed from a single device -- I'm suddenly describing a la carte cable.

Just enough effort

[NotDrWho]

Netflix needs to make just enough effort to make the studios happy

The studios need to make just enough effort to make it a pain to circumvent, but not impossible (meaning that 99% of people won't bother).

The consumer needs to make just enough effort to see the material they want to see.

Re:Just enough effort

[phishybongwaters]

Exactly. Netflix has never considered it's PAYING customers to be pirates. And that's who this will affect, paying customers. No pirate will be affected by these changes, only paying customers. It's the same with DRM protection on software, this only affects legitimate customers, pirates get the DRM removed for them before they download the software. In fact.... I'll admit to legally purchasing software then proceeding to use cracks released for the pirated version, to remove some of the nonsense DRM. It's sad but true. The same goes for media consumption. When I drop 400$ on the x-files boxset I assume every episode on every disk will play, out of the box. This isn't the case at all, and instead I need to go out and PIRATE the episodes on back chunks of the disk. I'm using netflix canada... I know, I know, I should be using a VPN to get the us version but really, I don't care, it has plenty of the shows I want in my catalog and anything that isn't there I can stream from an untold number of pirate sites. I'd prefer to pay 9$ to netflix a month so everything is above board. Once they can provide me the full catalog I'll be able to remove adblock and just use netflix. This will never happen because of the bullshit licensing laws out there. But hey, Netflix Canada gets streaming rights to The Force Awakens before anyone else, so it's not ALL bad.

Not doomed

[110010001000]

It isn't doomed to fail. VPN blocking works. Sure, you can get around it, but for most people that is going to be a hassle. Just like Internet censorship, or fighting piracy. It isn't going to fail for most people.

Note to content providers:

[the_other_one]

Let me pay to have your product streamed into Canada. Otherwise I will just get the shows free by other means.