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

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.

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.

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.